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SPAIN IN PROFILE : 



5C7 



A SUMMER AMONG THE OLIVES 
AND ALOES. 



BY 



JAMES ALBERT 5JARRIS0N, 

AUTHOR OF " GREEK VIGNETTES," ETC. 



Neque flere neque ridere, sed intellegere. 

Spinoza. 

Un peu de chasque chose et rien du tout, a la frangoise. 

Montaigne. 



1^' 




\c, 1879/ ^^Q-^, 



BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

1879. 



Copyright, 1879, 
By JAMES A. HARRISON. 

All ris^hts reserved. 



RIVERSFDE, CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



To 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 



J'ai un voyage a faire 
Aux pays Strangers ; 
II faut que je m'en aille : 
Dieu me I'a commande. 
Tenez, void ma bague, 
Ma ceinture a deux tours, 
Marque de mon amour. 

Cantique Pop. sur Si. Alexis. 



NOTE. 



There is a class of readers whom the unscien- 
tific traveler would gladly reach and interest, — 
the light skimmers of summer books between 
whom and distant countries lie, — not one, but 
many seas, and whose only hope, in all probabil- 
ity, of seeing them is through the more favored 
eyes of others. For these — not for those who 
have ' personally ' undertaken the adventure of 
Spain ' — this volume is specially written, — a se- 
ries of profiles projected more or less vaguely by 
a Spanish sun. The author feels his errors of 
omission and of commission quite as keenly as 
the most hostile critic could desire, and would 
hesitate to publish his sketches at all — for more 
they do not profess to be — if the general im- 
pression pervading them were unfavorable to 
the Spaniards. Much has doubtless been over- 
looked, much inadequately seen ; but the book is 
in no sense a guide-book, and wherever it has 



VI NOTE. 

been possible, details such as are found in guide- 
books are left to those compilations. The reali- 
ties of landscape, the mode of life and of travel, 
the aspect of the old Spanish cities, the habits of 
the people, the vicissitudes of a summer journey 
set down just as they appeared, form the staple 
of these pages. Personal impressions may, per- 
adventure, have a sort of value ; and if this slight 
record, which pretends to nothing beyond being 
a faithful transcription of personal impressions, 
should awaken the interest of a single reader and 
persuade him to study a most interesting country 
for himself, its aim will be more than accom- 
plished. 
Lexington, Va., 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

I. Over the Pyrenees i 

II. Glimpses of Aragon and Navarre . 24 

III. An Old Roman Capital . . . -37 

IV. July Bulls in Valencia . . . 44 
V. Palms 73 

VI. Between the Continents ... 82 
VII. The City of the Khalifs . . .92 
VIII. The Alhambra in Summer . . 105 
IX. On the Guadalquivir . . . .147 
X. A Cordova Scrap-bag . . . .191 
XL A Spanish Fontainebleau and Canter- 
bury 222 

XII. Madrid 247 

XIII. Statistics a vol d'oiseau . . . 288 

XIV. A Sentimental Journey . . .314 
XV. Philip's Folly 331 

XVI. CiNTRA in August .... 340 

XVII. The City of Inez 355 

XVIII. A Glass of Port 364 

XIX. Cloudland in Spain . . . . . 375 

XX. In Old Castile 387 

XXI. Burgos and a Spanish Spa . . . 406 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 



I. 



The king of Aragon look'd down 

From Campo Veijo, where he stood, 
And he beheld the sea of Spain, 

Both the ebb-tide and the flood. 

Frerb, Romance del Rey de Aragon. 

The blonde light of yellow Spain ! At sun- 
rise this morning we arrived in the capital of the 
Basque provinces, Bayonne, the bishop's see, the 
home of the Jews exiled under Philip, the spot 
that has for some inscrutable reason given its 
name to the bayonet, — for it was not invented 
here, — the paradise of ham, chocolate, and pa- 
tois ! All night we had been climbing towards 
it from Bordeaux, the vast wine metropolis, which 
loomed over the river at us through innumerable 
lights and gathering mist. The moon followed 
through the night, and we were enabled to isolate 
and individualize the groups and successions of 
landscape that detached themselves from the sil- 



2 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

very dusk and left a vivid impression on our not 
too wide-open eyes. The country seemed to 
grow poor as we approached Bordeaux, and noth- 
ing seemed to indicate the existence of, or ap- 
proach to, a great city. From Bordeaux to Ba- 
yonne the journey is monotonous. The yejlow 
light of morning illuminated extensive stretches 
of pine, quaint Basque stations embowered in 
vines and trees, just awakened peasants saunter- 
ing to work with the leisurely pace of the South, 
and a long train full of weary travelers. The 
air meanwhile had grown delightfully fresh and 
keen, an overcoat was welcome, and the fresh 
fragrant presence of the sea — the blue Bay of 
Biscay — was felt. Then suddenly the train ran 
in under huge fortifications built by Vauban him- 
self, and we were at Bayonne. 

In this remote corner of France, locked in by 
the French and Spanish Pyrenees, one would 
expect many survivals of antiquity in costume. 
But such is not the case. Costume survives in 
Bayonne only in the peculiar blue turban-like 
caps and broad-brimmed straw sombreros of the 
men and women. A bright red sash — a rem- 
nant of the Far East — is found now and then ; 
brown faces, brilliant eyes and black hair, small 
figures and feet, great animation of manner and 
profuse gesticulation, announce the vicinity of 
Spain. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 3 

Two picturesque little rivers, the Nive and the 
Adour, run together here and produce a charm- 
ing variety in the landscape. Bayonne is a great 
starting-place for the tour of the Pyrenees baths 
and water-cures, little French-Spanish Alpine 
nests perched among the cliffs and valleys of the 
outlying Pyrenees and combining many pleasant 
peculiarities of the two countries. The Pyrenees 
are nowhere much beyond ten thousand feet 
high j but there is a peculiar cordiality and po- 
liteness in the manners of the people that com- 
pensates for Alpine altitudes and makes you feel 
at home. Several trains leave the place every 
day for Pau, and the boat penetrates the idyllic 
scenery of the river, while south runs daily the 
great current of travel to Madrid and the penin- 
sula : so the Bayonnais do not lack for the usual 
excitements of frontier towns. 

The profusion of gold lace and scarlet breeches 
also announces the existence of a near frontier ; 
little fierce-whiskered, tight-laced, sworded and 
emphatic gentlemen, who take their cafe noir 
under the arcades of the Place d'Armes, promen- 
ade up and down, and ogle the pretty milliner 
girls, indulge frequently in absinthe and cognac 
and are willing to fight for any government in 
ofiice at the present moment. No blame to them ; 
one must live. Life is sufficiently agreeable 
whether Henri Cinq or MacMahon Premier be 



4 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

on the throne ; and the grisettes take their even- 
ing promenade all the same. A handful of red- 
legs comes to dress-parade of an evening, accom- 
panied by a multitude of the loudest drums and 
shrillest fifes in Christendom ; immense aplomb 
and bravura; vivid reminiscences of La Belle 
France ; wonderfully straight, proud figures won- 
derfully dressed and self-conscious; tremendous 
sensation ; marchez 1 So it goes in France. 
The French shops are all fagades ; the French 
people have only front teeth and front hair ; 
there is brilliance and wit and culture and the 
best foot foremost ; then the Germans come. 
Alas for light hearts, singing chambermaids, ta- 
ble (Thbte^ and grand confortable. They all vanish 
down the back stairs and hunt up their stockings 
full of hoarded gold to pay the milliards with. 
Is this all such fascinating civilization is fit for? 
France gives us our wine and our perfumes and 
our manners ; has she no great example of self- 
restraint and self-abnegation to give t Looking 
on this little bit of hid-away, happy French life at 
Bayonne, haunted by the lovely light of the blue 
sea and the shining river and the morning-glory- 
tinted Spanish mountains, — a life shut in by the 
tall Basque houses, the dim arcaded streets, the 
shadow of the beautiful twelfth century cathedral 
lying in benediction on it, — the question recurs 
with tenfold intensity : What will the French 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 5 

come to ? The country is under exquisite cult- 
ure ; every foot of it is painfully, even pitifully 
nursed and coddled and pampered, like a spoiled 
child \ the ripe wheat and mellowing grapes and 
multitudinous vegetables followed us in super- 
fluity about thirty miles an hour, as fast as we 
could travel, from Paris to Bayonne ; the fields 
were shot with poppies of magenta, and purple 
of corn-flowers, and white trumpets of tangled 
convolvulus, interspersed with brilliant green 
meadows, mill-wheels with their lazy abundance 
of falling water, ancient villages and cities like 
Orleans, Angouleme, Blois, and Poitiers ; vine- 
yards, sugar beet, poplars ; white turnpikes, new- 
mown grass-fields, spiritually present in the per- 
fumed air ; harvest people asleep beside the slain 
gold of the harvest ; song of birds and effulgent 
presence of flickering and chanting streams ; but 
what is coiled at the heart of this dazzling pict- 
ure. Heaven only knows. The sad heart says 
the French cannot be trusted ; their fields can, 
their pockets can, their honor and honesty can, 
their great bank can, and their great artistic and 
imitative instinct can ; but w^hat is a-top and at 
bottom of all this, the mainspring and working 
principle of it, viz : the French themselves, can- 
not. 

From Bayonne to Biarritz, the summer sojourr 
of Eugenie and the emperor, it is but a few miles. 



6 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Think of the poor widow in exile, doomed to Ger- 
man baths when she will go any whither, with 
her own pleasant Villa Euge'nie nestling in the 
rocky glens of Gascoigne far from her and all her 
race. The place has an interest more tragic 
than that of Miramar. Flowers, music, light, 
loveliness, and — exile. The place seems to 
languish for the far-away empress. It will not be 
itself again without her ; and the magnificent ho- 
tels look out over the sea as if ever expecting 
somebody, — the blue delusive sea, with its per- 
petual smile, its fickleness, and its summer beauty. 
Rocks of singular formation lie at the feet of the 
bay and form islets where confluent lines of sea 
gather into what seem like vast foam-flowers, and 
break in delightful waves when the wind is still. 
Set in this blue mirror, with the foam foliations 
and foam fringes surrounding them, these masses 
of rock look like huge sea-anemones ruched and 
serrated. To-day it was strangely calm ; the sky 
was a warm gray • the sea serene as any lotus- 
eater, save when these rocks vocalized it and fas- 
cinated it into efflorescence. A light-house stands 
opposite on a promontory approached by a drive 
penetrated with musky pine odors. This is the 
famous drive from Bayonne by the Barre and 
Phare. The pines are everywhere slashed and 
cut, with earthenware pots attached to catch the 
resin. Everywhere one sees bleeding trees ; 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 7 

everything is wounded and hors de combat^ and 
there is a disagreeable sense of mutilation in gaz- 
ing on these splendid trunks treated in such a 
way. The white road meanders through the 
green pines all the same, and the world is none 
the wiser. 

Biarritz is the Brighton of the Basses-Pyre- 
nees ; it is very hilly and contains many hand- 
some villas. The drive back on the imperial of 
the omnibus — does not Victor Hugo ride on 
the imperial of an omnibus ? — through spacious 
grounds and along elegant summer residences, is 
very pleasant. Particularly elegant is the Villa 
Sofia, with its sward, its grouped and glorious 
geraniums, its white figures of pedestalled and 
dancing marble, and the graciousness and spa- 
ciousness of its verdant park. Then the omni- 
bus traverses arcades of green interwoven syca- 
mores and poplars and elms, past men winding 
hemp into cord, past the two-towered fagade of 
the Gothic cathedral, past the fortifications dot- 
ted here and there with diminutive French sol- 
diers, past the ever-present octroi and its recol- 
lections of mediaevalism, in under a resounding 
arched gateway, dashing round it and the Place 
d'Armes with its cafes and balconied hotels, up 
to the stopping-place in the Rue du Gouverne- 
ment, — altogether a charming drive for eight 
cents. I see a forerunner of Spain in the numer- 



8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ous fleas which have jumped to meet me on the 
frontier; in the very miscellaneous dinner and 
coiffured waiting-girls of the Hotel St. Martin, 
and in the unsavorinesses which accompany the 
hostelry dedicated to that long-suffering saint. 
The wine is sour ; gravy over everything is al- 
ready in the ascendant ; the bread looks as if it 
were aged ; and the ham is intensely salty. The 
celebrated Gascoigne and Galician porkers have 
already suffered in my estimation. Bayonne 
prides herself on ham, on little feet, on sparkling 
eyes and dusky hair, and on her mariners. She 
is the 2, not the zero of the French provinces ; 
two nations go to make up her nationality ; lin- 
guistically she is unique, since neither Prince 
Bonaparte nor Mr. Vinson has been able defin- 
itively to settle the relationship of her patois. 
French life has here run down into an intense 
drop of highly concentrated individuality ; and 
painter, poet, and historian have all enough, and 
more than enough, to detain them pleasantly for 
weeks. 

Leaving Bayonne at half-past ^mq, or so, — for 
you never know precisely when you do leave, being 
in the land of inexactness, lazy watches, and com- 
fortable time-tables, — the train arrived at Sara- 
gossa at eleven in the evening, with more or less 
of punctuality. Indeed, the perfect indifference 
with which advertised arrivals and departures are 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. g 

ignored as works of supererogation, the accom- 
modating spirit of the trains, which stop every- 
where and take in everybody, the easy insou- 
ciance of conductors, railway clerks, and porters 
who smoke the cigarrito and dangle the Spanish 
leg from every conceivable support, box, bench, 
or fence-rail, remind one of North Carolina in 
the olden time, when engineer, fireman, and pas- 
sengers all had to get out and drive the pigs off 
the track. It will not do to fuss and fume up 
and down Spanish railway stations in the usual 
way. , Everybody ' takes it easy \ ' the traveler 
from England and the Continent soon abandons 
the acute distress he may suffer for fear of being 
left, and falls into the take-your-time-and-enjoy- 
yourself fashion of lazy Spain. Nobody is ever 
left in this obliging country, be he even the tor- 
toise of the fable ; * cinco minutos ! ' (five minutes), 
cries the man when the train arrives at some mud- 
colored Basque village. You are delighted at the 
prospect of so soon departing ; but delight changes 
into woe, as ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes pass 
away without leaving and without assignable rea- 
son for remaining. There is nothing in the place 
but a yellow-skinned Basque woman in colored 
bandanna and voluminous skirts, who walks 
around crying Agiia ! agua ! (water ! water !) 
which she serves out of an earthen-ware caraffe 
used for cooling by evaporation ; a gendarme 



lO SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

paces up and down in red breeches, blue coat, 
yellow straps, and cocked hat, with a loaded rifle ; 
two or three dirty peasants in the national boina 
hang indolently over the fence and gaze listlessly 
on the thinly populated train ; the conductor par- 
leys with half a dozen different people, quells a 
row in the third-class carriage, drops in and talks 
with the passengers ; people get in and out with 
no dread of being taken off, run to the fonda 
(buffet) for wine and water ; wash their faces at 
the pumps ; eat, drink, and are merry ; in short, 
manana, manana (to-morrow, to-morrow), the na- 
tional Spanish word, is in full play and keeps the 
peevish northerner in continual annoyance with 
its ceaseless suggestion of procrastination. A 
lady traveling in the same carriage with me 
asked a gentleman passing by when we should 
get to Valencia, a town lying at no great distance 
from where we then were ; * Manana ! manana I ' 
answered he, with decision ; whereupon the poor 
lady had an attack of ejaculation beheld in its 
perfection only in this country of superlatives : 
' Madre mia,'' exclaimed she ; ^ it is impossible ! ' 
On being assured firmly and positively from the 
same source that to-morrow it was, and to-morrow 
it would be, she lapsed into the depths of the 
guia qficial, or official guide for the railways, and 
appeared determined to work out her salvation 
with fear and trembling out of that. She was 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 1 

willing to arrive at nine the same evening — but 
to-morrow ! There is a mysterious charm for the 
Spaniard in to-morrow, there are so many possi- 
bilities and probabilities ; so much may happen 
'twixt now and then ; you may be here, and I 
there ; my ship may come in and your chateau 
be built. The poesy of yesterday is as nothing 
to the events and eventualities of the time to 
come. Poor Spain ! In the same way Philip II. 
had looked forward, and Isabel II. had worked, 
and Cervantes had died a hooded monk. In 
thinking of the great to-morrow, the beautiful 
daughter of Lope immured herself and her genius 
in a cloister ; and the king of Navarre burnt ten 
thousand J ews in the market-place of Pampeluna. 
With eyes fixed on the supreme future, all Span- 
ish victories and losses. Inquisitions and expul- 
sions, are more or less mixed up with delay, 
procrastination, — the element of futurity ; and 
Spain has put off being civilized till she will 
never be. 

After leaving Bayonne the road ascends gradu- 
ally through some wonderful engineering work, 
tunnels, bridges, steep grades, and sharp cul- 
verts, into a region of Alpine loveliness and 
charm. The northern part of the peninsula — 
the six hundred and fifty miles from Cape Cruz 
on the Mediterranean to Cape Finisterre on the 
Atlantic coast — is luxuriantly clad with vegeta- 



12 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

tion. Pine, spruce, oak, birch, chestnut, heather, 
ferns, and gorse. Alp flowers and moss, fragrant 
lichens, sparkling waterfalls and rivulets, glens 
full of Swiss scents and scenes, and valleys viv- 
idly draped in the most living emerald, meet 
the eye everywhere. Not the least charm of the 
Basque region are the quaint watering-places and 
baths perched in among the almost inaccessible 
mountains \ the sulphur, saline, and chalybeate 
springs that gush out of the towering Pyrenees, 
and form nuclei for adventurous travelers, mount- 
ain chalets, and picturesque, semi-civilized sum- 
mer life. The peaks of the Pyrenees are fre- 
quently over ten thousand feet in height, on the 
French side tropically rich and forest-clad, on the 
Spanish side far less so from the almost vertical 
character of the precipices. Four or five roads 
put the two countries in communication, — little 
enough for a stretch of over two hundred leagues. 
Great wealth of game, fish, primeval forest, and 
unexplored flora, exists in this wild border-land ; 
and the inhabitants, especially on the south side, 
are a fine, stalwart, manly, and independent race ; 
prone to the savage virtues of war, love, and 
hospitality, a stronghold of conservatism and the 
contraband ; of hunters, fishers, smugglers, Carl- 
ists; splendid Basque, — whom Voltaire described 
as *a lively little people that dance on top of 
the Pyrenees,' — Navarrese, Aragonese, and Cat- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, I 3 

alonian fellows, as far removed as possible from 
the languor and listlessness of the lower prov- 
inces. The passes even excel the Swiss passes 
in height and magnificence. The French, true to 
their nature, have utilized their side to the utmost : 
it abounds in fairy retreats and mountain hermit- 
ages, tiny baths ;^ith graceful casinos, straight 
rows of poplars, meandering boulevards, nooks, 
and cafes, bands of music, light hearts, bright 
flowers, and green turf. Railroads penetrate the 
valleys and plain. Bayonne, Toulouse, Agen, and 
Perpignan are centres from which tours may be 
made to them ; and, in a word, there is Swiss com- 
fort added to French alertness, intelligence, and 
taste. 

On the other side, tras-los-montes — how dif- 
ferent ! The wild, almost uninhabited plains of 
Navarre and Aragon, a solitary railroad from 
Bayonne to Barcelona, faces and forms and cos- 
tumes as if just flashed on you from Velazquez' 
portraits, a sixteenth century look in the eyes 
of the people, conventual and monkish life with 
its deep impress on the land, roads, country vil- 
ages, wide sombreros, priests, peasants in knee- 
breeches, women in veils and mantillas, savage 
looking boys and beggars, splendid cathedrals 
and wretched family-life, donkeys and muleteers, 
diligences, intolerable dust and pitiless sunshine. 

San Juan de Luz is the first village reached 



14 SPAIN IN PJWFIIE, 

after leaving Bayonne, and a picture of poetic 
landscape it was as it nestled in the silvery, dewy 
morning light, just enough concealed and just 
enough revealed by the mist to make it a magnet 
for the eye. The crown jewel in its necklace of 
memories, say the chronicles, is the marriage of 
the great Louis XIV. here in 1660 to Maria The- 
resa, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain. The little 
place seems never to have recovered from the 
shock, and looks out to sea from its strange 
Basque houses as if still dreaming of the august 
event. The whole country through which we 
passed is redolent of Wellington and the wars of 
1 8 13. Battles, stormings, slaughters, victories, 
retreats, glory, triumph, and death are inextrica- 
bly intermingled with its fields of butter-cups, its 
purple heather, and its changeable hued tufts of 
blue-green pines. Theophile Gautier contemptu- 
ously called the famous isle where Louis XIV. 
met Maria Theresa, near Hendaya, a * fried sole 
of middling size.' Other famous memories clus- 
ter about this locality ; the great Velazquez con- 
tracted a cold here and died, while fitting up the 
salon for the conference between the Spanish 
and French kings ; Francis I. was exchanged at 
San Juan in 1526, leaving his sons behind as 
hostages : and wherever you go, everything is 
salted and peppered with souvenirs ; here this, 
yonder that, took place ; here an assassination, 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. I 5 

there a wedding ; history, like a loom, crosses its 
innumerable threads till the whole is woven into 
a glittering fabric. 

Next comes Irun, where everything and every- 
body coming from France is emptied out and ex- 
amined for the delectation of the Spanish custom- 
house people. I will do them the justice to say, 
however, that they were courteous and passed us 
without difficulty. Custom-house officers have an 
infallible instinct for their victims ; they seldom 
trouble the right-minded and innocent stranger ; 
it is the nervous, fidgety, conscious, conscience- 
smitten wretches into whose shrinking eyes and 
abnormal wallets they look, drawing their con- 
clusions. Irun is a fisher-village, but it too has 
great things to say of itself. La Fayette sailed 
hence for America ; a battle or two took place 
between the English and French in the vicinity 
in 1 8 13, etc. All through Spain one is pursued 
by this abominable date until it becomes a posi- 
tive nightmare. The town is not of sufficient in- 
terest to demand more than a few words. From 
Irun the train brings us to San Sebastian, a town 
of very striking situation on the Bay of Biscay, 
and quite recently celebrated for its bombard- 
ment. It lies on an isthmus and is surrounded 
by water on three sides, — water curiously enliv- 
ened by the Bayonne and Basque boats (called 
trincadoiirs). It is the Madrid Long Branch; 



1 6 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

there are delightful bathing, a fine promenade, 
military music, a bull-ring, handsome women, brill- 
iant verdure of summer on the hills, pure air, and 
purer water. 

From the railway window the town is a real 
picture ; we happened to pass on Sunday and saw 
the Basque women in their Sunday gear, with 
bright bandanna kerchiefs and long tresses of 
blue-black hair hanging down behind after the 
fashion of a Chinese pigtail. The foot-gear of 
the men — as all through Aragon and Navarre — 
is truly antique ; a sandal, made of felt, with 
straps coming over the toes, crossing the instep 
and tied around the ankle, and worn with or 
without stockings. More pretentious people 
have white cloth or white canvas shoes, now and 
then variegated with strips of leather. It seems 
to be an easy, delightful, and open sort of foun- 
dation, such as to make one's feet, rendered fe- 
verish by confinement and heat, envy their lucky 
wearer. This sandal seems quite what we read 
of in ancient story before the torture of box toes, 
shoe-buckles, and high heels had been instituted. 
How we complicate the simplicities of ancient 
civilization ; compare the plain tunic of a Greek 
woman with a costume of Worth's ; Socrates' 
oholus with the Bank of England ! 

The scenery as we ascend toward the Pyrenees, 
— for we really seem to be ascending thither, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 7 

becomes wilder and lonesomer. A keen brush 
of Alpine air smites the cheek and titillates the 
lungs now and then^ the ferns with their wonder- 
ful ribbons of foliated lace become heavier and 
heavier, there is a delicious sheen on the green 
fields, sounds of falling water touch the esar of 
July like liquid heaven. The fire and faintness 
of the low, painted, and panting plains melt into 
the dewy freshness of sharper altitudes ; the eyes 
are bathed in the suffusing moisture of these 
upper regions ; summer is forgot and spring has 
come again. We wandered on and on up the 
charming valley of the Urumea, fields on the 
right and fields on the left, blue perspectives 
aeriform, the mountains in the distance snowless 
and sunshine smitten. Stoppages at strange lit- 
tle towns where women with veils and market- 
baskets got out and peasants with tresses and 
kerchiefs got in ; stoppages for water, stoppages 
for no earthly reason except the fun of the thing, 
to breathe the bright Sunday air, and look down 
on the yellowing harvest marching carnival-like 
through this idyllic landscape. Happy Spaniards ! 
Muy leal y muy hermosa Espana I 

We were not in a hurry that summer morning : 
it was all so beautiful ; the light of the fresh 
dawn was over us ; we were passing great for- 
tresses and turreted battlements, and the sea 
looked in and smiled and sang to us, and men 



1 8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

drank chacali and gazed and laughed and talked 
broken Spanish and listened to the harmonious 
inflections of the Basque, and nobody seemed to 
think it was Sunday. Presently Tolosa, a town 
of some ten thousand inhabitants^ was reached, 
shut in between the Loaza and Ernio hills, — not, 
however, before we had passed Hernani, famous 
to lovers of Victor Hugo, who just missed being 
a Spaniard. Everybody seemed to be at the sta- 
tions ; chatter, chatter, chatter all the time with 
an animation and an eagerness unknown in less 
impressionable countries. The third-class is al- 
ways crowded in Spain, — and such a scrap-bag 
of nationalities and costumes, patois, odds and 
ends of eccentric and impoverished humanity as 
it is ! Whenever we stopped the noise of some 
adjacent third-class carriage was deafening, every- 
body talking at once, everybody gesticulating, 
everybody declaiming and haranguing, from the 
market-women to the abbe in black skull-cap. 
It was like a nest of blackbirds. You meet peo- 
ple who can read and people who cannot; you 
see Spanish life and get your pockets picked. 
I felt as if I was in one of Caravaggio's pictures. 
Doubting Thomases explored one's empty-look- 
ing pockets; sneering Pharisees picked up cuar- 
tos, and asked one the superscription and image ; 
valiant Peters swore eternal friendship, and long- 
tressed Magdalens sat at one's feet. And here, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 9 

too, were all the sons and daughters of Eve that 
sat under the pencils of Murillo, Ribera, and 
Zurbaran, whether hung to crosses, suffering 
agonies in the garden, or enjoying our common 
existence under the golden radiance shed over 
Murillo's beggars ; the same eyes of coal, skins 
of tan, hair of purple, and features in perpetual 
curves ; the rags and ruin, the gayety, the pas- 
sion, and the pathos ; Spanish life in marvel- 
ous encyclopaedic merriment and synthesis and 
sympathy ; all traveling cheap, all large-eyed 
and happy! All over the peninsula the same 
jumble is found, the same canaille^ the same eat- 
ing, singing, and carousing manhood and wom- 
anhood, trying to get the best of everything for 
the least possible price ; trying to outwit you 
and everybody else in a bargain ;. trying to drive 
you farther than you engage for to make more 
money ; trying to show you castles and abbeys 
and churches and palaces, whether you will or 
not, for a few cuartos, bidding you 'go with God,' 
when they are done ; begging in every imaginable 
crevice and corner ; throwing coins out of their 
poor poverty-stricken pockets over the silver rail- 
ings as an offering at the shrine of some sumpt- 
uous Virgin ; eating and dancing in the street 
with delightful naivete ; going to bed to wrestle 
"^xXki pulgas and chi?tches. An American's idea of 
Spain and the Spaniard is apt to be clearer than 



20 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

his idea of other countries, owing to the much that 
has been written and painted on the subject, the 
geniahty and romance of the national character, 
the soft beauty of the Mediterranean landscape, 
the intimate relations between Spain and Amer- 
ica, and the presence of so many of our distin- 
guished men in Spanish diplomatic offices. The 
novelty of a tour to Spain has its edge greatly 
taken off by many of these circumstances and 
the books they have produced, — an enduring 
and charming literature now extensive enough to 
form a library in itself. 

At Alsasua in Navarre the carriages are 
changed for Pampeluna and Saragossa, unless 
you desire to go direct to Madrid, a long and te- 
dious journey over the arid plains of Castile, past 
wretched little towns, with but a collection of 
beasts and unhappy-looking people by way of evi- 
dences of civilization. Immediately on entering 
the train for Pampeluna you feel that the manage- 
ment has changed hands. The road belongs 
to the Rothschilds. The speed is not great, 
but the carriages are comparatively clean and 
broad. In France the roads are narrow-gauge, 
in Spain broad-gauge, and this accounts for the 
much greater width of the Spanish cars. Travel- 
ing rates are very cheap ; every ticket has the 
price stamped upon it in reals and cuartos ; the 
conductor walks along the side of the train in 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 21 

the old-fashioned way and collects the fares ; 
everything is easy-going and good-natured. The 
ticket offices so far are true abominations, a sort 
of stye out of which a pig-faced individual peers 
and talks Catalonian Spanish at you, no matter 
what your nationality. 

All along until we came to Pampeluna ruined 
stations met us, relics of the Carlist war ; soldiers 
paced up and down with loaded guns, and a gen- 
eral air of uncertainty and uneasiness seemed to 
prevail. The country is now, I believe, quiet, — 
quiet as this caldron of Spain can ever be. The 
plains, wheat-fields, and mountains of Navarre lay 
before us, yellow, yellow, yellow. The day was 
fortunately gray, or the ocean of yellow light 
might have swallowed us up. Imagine yellow 
roads, yellow fields, yellow rocks, yellow people, 
yellow houses, yellow dust, yellow earth, yellow 
sky, with just the green neck of the bottle through 
which you have come from Bayonne expanding 
into the immeasurable yellow plains of Castile, 
Navarre, and Aragon ; and the yellow sea sweep- 
ing down from the Pyrenees and covering every- 
thing with its saffron waves ; yellow daffodils, 
yellow sun-flowers, yellow sunsets, fruits yellow, 
and grain yellow, and yellow ague in the eyes of 
the people ; imagine the Mediterranean turned to 
yellow pigment and flowing over the land ; im- 
agine all the rays of the spectrum yellow and all 



22 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

of those rays throwing their jaundiced light over 
Spain, and every chemical substance and re-agent 
doing the same till the soul faints with glut of 
yellow light, and its sole, fervent prayer is for 
the greenness and sweetness and freshness and 
purity it has just left behind on the benignant 
slopes of the Urumea, and you have a pale con- 
ception of the blonde light of yellow Spain. It 
is well the people have black hair, for that might 
be yellow and increase the trouble. 

Tudela and Calaborra are passed, both bustling 
Navarrese towns, with the whole population, as it 
seemed, hanging agape over the station fence 
gazing at us. A very good mesa redonda {table 
d'hote) is got for three pesetas (francs) at Cala- 
borra, and one wonders where the Spanish get so 
many savory morsels from in the general sterility 
of this part of the country. They dine twice and 
do not breakfast at all. The almuerzo^ or eleven 
o'clock breakfast, is a dinner in every respect ex- 
cept soup and sweetmeats : wine, course after 
course of meats, eggs, fish, stews, fowl, salad, 
cheese, and fruits. Comida, or six o'clock dinner, 
is the same, with greater elaboration. Coffee 
may be got — at least at the hotels, in the restau- 
rant. The wine is too much like cordial to be 
pleasant in the long run, — fiery, sweet, fruity, 
garnet-colored, and rich. 

At four we arrived at Pampeluna, the capital of 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 23 

Navarre, a town of about thirty thousand inhab- 
itants, full of the Carlist spirit, — Carlist and old 
Navarrese grandees, and antiquity of aspect. It is 
of little interest to the tourist, — a dreary, yellow, 
ancient,* dilapidated town, which has corrupted 
the former Fompejopolis into the modern Pampe- 
luna^ — stands about a mile off the railroad, and 
looks infinitely sad and still on its yellow river. 
An hour — the official twenty-three minutes — -was 
spent at the station, apparently waiting for the 
sala de espera or waiting-room to fill with pas- 
sengers before we started, and then the train 
crept on into fertile, treeless Aragon, over the 
winding Ebro, into the city of Saragossa (Caesarea- 
Augusta). The transition from Navarre to Ara- 
gon and Catalonia is like that from Mississippi to 
New^ England. 



11. 



1 



In a somer sesun, when softe was the sonne, 
I shaped me into a schroud, a scheep as I were ; 
In habite of an hermite unholy of werkes, 
Wende I wydene in this world wondres to here. 

Piers Plowman^ prologue. 

Everybody knows a little about the story of 
Saragossa — its foundation by Noah's nephew (!), 
its fortification by Cassar and his legions, the 
Moorish corruption of its name into Saracosta, 
its capture by the Suevi in 452, by the Goths in 
466, by the Berbers and Charlemagne, and its 
subjection to the kings of Aragon ; its rise into 
the capital of Aragon before Ferdinand married 
Isabella and united the two kingdoms of Castile 
and Aragon, its celebrity in the Peninsular War 
of our days, and the famous sieges of 1808, when 
the town held out so marvelously against Le- 
fevre, Junot, and Lannes. One is surprised on 
walking through its dusty thoroughfares to find 
so much history lingering amid their quaint ugli- 
ness. The town lies, or rather sprawls, along the 
Ebro, — a great, shallow, turbid, tortuous stream 
that fertilizes this thirsty province, and is ever- 
lastingly turning itself in the way of the railroad, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2$ 

being jumped by bridges, and administering re- 
freshment to the wayside pilgrim with the sight 
of its crawling water. It is the incarnation of 
mud and misery, with long lines of dyspeptic 
looking poplars throwing their haggard shadows 
on the banks, — vineyards of fierce Aragonese 
grapes ripening their garnet fire in the sun, and 
now and then a cluster of miserable hovels, with 
Posada (resting-place, inn) written on the side 
in letters almost as big as the huts themselves. 
It was welcome and delicious night when we ar- 
rived, — night, that pearl of seasons in this daz- 
zling peninsula, — and the quaker gray-green of 
the olive plantations, in which Saragossa is em- 
bowered, could not be seen. We dashed along 
through the rattling street (oh ! the unspeakable 
comfort of having no trunks to detain us at the 
stations !), and drew up at the Hotel of the Uni- 
verse (does not that sound Spanish ?). 

A good night's rest prepared the way for en- 
joyment on the morrow, aided by the softest mur- 
murs of the fountain splashing in the patio^ on 
which the chamber looked. These patios are one 
of the characteristic charms of Spain : court- 
yards, often edged exquisitely with flowers and 
urns, a jet of sparkling water in the centre, can- 
vas awnings oscillating gently in the wind above, 
and mysterious chambers, before which hang the 
floating and twilight-cherishing persianas of straw, 



26 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

opening out on these spots of perfumed tranquil- 
lity. The Moors left \h^patio behind as a legacy 
to Spanish senoritas, who sit behind the curtains, 
reading or embroidering, a prey to the imagina- 
tive reverie of the South. You generally enter 
these enchanted abodes through a great arched 
doorway, sometimes a cluster of fluted pillars or 
the filigree of a Moorish screen flinging their in- 
tervening grace between you and them. Now 
and then there is a deep vista, a delicate colon- 
nade, a series of monumental vases that have 
caught fire with flowers ; a pavilion all gilt and 
airiness and honeysuckle, sunny lines of shelled 
or pebbled walk, a glory of far-away oleander and 
orange, and a glimmer of winged and light-poised 
statuary. There is everything to put out the world 
and keep in the indefinable sweetness of perfect 
stillness and peace. Our dining-room at the ho- 
tel looked out on the court-yard and its fountains, 
and as we tasted or toyed with the curiosities of 
Spanish culinary art before us, we could catch 
the freshness of the dropping water and enjoy 
the sensation of coolness it always produces. 

I sallied forth on a walk before breakfast and 
found the streets almost thronged. It was my 
first experience of a genuine Spanish town. 

Saragossa is so far from the ordinary lines of 
travel that it is neglected more than it deserves. 
If you want to see the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2/ 

eighteenth centuries in their Spanish architectu- 
ral peculiarities, their walls, their fortress houses, 
their twisted streets, tiny boutiques^ and infinite 
nonchalance and dilapidation ; if you want to 
go to bed and wake up two hundred years ago ; 
if you want to compare the insane elaboration 
of the modern table d'hote with the simplicities, 
the unchanging habits, the domestic conserva- 
tism, the town life, the household economies of 
a hundred years gone by, Saragossa is the place 
to transport yourself to. Not that there is any- 
thing the least wonderful about the place, for 
there is not ; a brown, provincial, sleepy, satisfied 
Spanish town, gazing into its sluggish river until it 
has become stupefied and comatose ; it has noth- 
ing of the vividly picturesque to detain a sensa- 
tion hunter, still less to tickle the luxurious few 
who travel en grande toilette and are particular 
about kid gloves. But to the artist, the anti- 
quary, the thoughtful and curious student of 
epochs and manners, there is much to see, and 
much to carry away. Every window has the in- 
variable balcony, with the green v/oven persianas 
hanging out over the balustrade ; the high houses 
all have the projecting para at the top ; on the 
ground floor the shops are entered through flow- 
ing curtains like the Italian churches ; over many 
there are massy coats of arms, scrolls, quarter- 
ings, devices, and blazons molded in plaster j 



28 SPAIN IN- PROFILE. 

before every two or three there is a beggar sta- 
tioned, with some astonishing deformity, invoking 
all the saints in heaven to smile on you whether 
you give him a cuarto or not. (How one would 
like to do to these people as old Chaucer once did 
to a Franciscan monk who had insulted him, — give 
them all a sound thrashing around !) Dark-eyed 
seiioras, with lace mantillas flowing over heads 
and shoulders, hurry by, going to mass ; groups 
of funny little Spanish street waifs play at the 
never-ending mXioml pelota, or turn and ask your 
worship to give them a penny for the love of God ; 
an arriero saunters by, driving his hay-laden 
mules and donkeys ; not a carriage is to be seen, 
and the yellow omnibuses with their quaint ber- 
lina in front come along at a truly antediluvian 
pace ; there is no haste, no eagerness, only great 
flakes of golden sunshine everywhere, great 
clouds of lazy, whirling dust, fruit hanging over 
the garden walls, and scents of gathering summer 
wafting from the new-mown fields. You walk in 
the middle of the narrow street, stroll into the 
choired and cloistered coolness of parish churches, 
seek the shadow of providential walls and gaze 
out on the glittering atmosphere through half-shut 
eyes ; you wonder that this white and yellow 
light does not burn the eyes of these people out 
of their sockets. How could the Spaniards en- 
dure it if they were a reading people ? As it is, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 29 

the book-shops are mean, dark, and full of Paul 
de Kock ; the newspapers are printed in Lilliput, 
and people who get in and out of trains have to 
have their tickets spelled out for them. Igno- 
rance is written in characters as big as the 
wedges of Babylon all over these mendicant faces ; 
you instinctively feel that they have never looked 
into a book. And those who do read sometimes 
make a singular choice : viz., two young ladies 
poring over Boccaccio in the carriage coming to 
Barcelona, then drinking wine out of various bot- 
tles end foremost, powdering and making their 
toilettes before a whole earful of passengers in 
entire unconsciousness, and, as a crowning horror, 
washing their faces with a quantity of pomade- 
like stuff which they finger-nailed out of a pot ! 
They were evidently very decent, but very naive 
people, who seemed habituated to this sort of 
thing, — Boccaccio and all, — offered luncheon to 
their neighbors, laughed and talked and joked 
merrily as we crawled along, and finally were met 
and welcomed by very nice-looking people at the 
Barcelona station. They had a whole carpet-bag 
kill of towels, bottles, hand-mirrors, cold-chicken, 
rice-powder, combs and brushes, peaches, slip- 
pers, bread and butter, fans and cake, — • all in 
delightful confusion. The day was insupporta- 
bly hot, but they would get out wherever practi- 
cable, promenade up and down in the sun, buy a 



30 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

plate of soup here and there, cry ^O Dios! Maria! 
Maria I ' when anything out of the common run 
happened, and were as natural as so many kit- 
tens on a first holiday excursion. They may 
hardly, however, be regarded as specimens of the 
Spanish ladies, who are the prettiest women and 
have the prettiest manners in the world. 

Saragossa has two cathedrals, the Metropolitan 
La Sea, and the Del Pilar. La Sea is more like 
a wide, magnificent Gothic cloister, mysteriously 
dark and vast as you enter, and becoming more 
and more beautiful as the slender columns un- 
fasten themselves from the encrusting twilight 
and shoot up their sheaved pilasters to the ribbed 
and rosetted roof in almost too ethereal lightness. 
Golden wheels and roses hang from the vaulted 
roof, where each column spreads out like a spider- 
limbed palm and the worshiper stands as in 
some sacred wood. The light percolates through 
white wheel-shaped windows very high up, which 
gives admirable illumination to the piers, but- 
tresses, sculptured cherubs, and pilaster capitals 
of the upper portion. The spectator is himself 
almost in the dark as he gazes up at this vaguely 
illumined groined grotto, with its dome-covered 
side-chapels, thrilling abysses and recesses, and 
silent beauty. It realizes most perfectly Dr. John- 
son's ' horrible feeling of immense height' What 
a contrast was this serenity with the garish day 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 3 1 

I had just left ! You felt it was a holy place, 
with its sanctity of eight hundred years, its far 
flickering tapers, the noiseless worshipers kneel- 
ing around in the dusk of the mighty pillars, and 
the sweet spell of its over-arching presence 
strange and tender on the silent heart. The 
choir is in the middle and shut in by a carved 
screen on which a whole population of interlac- 
ing arms and legs, en monogramme, saints and 
sinners, legends and Bible stories, disport them- 
selves in marble and gilt. How little has all this 
dancing canaille to do with the majestic pillars 
about which they cling, and the starry heights of 
the ogive arches ! As I sat gazing up at them 
with delight, the verger approached and made me 
uncross my legs. It was irreverent ! 

The other cathedral, Del Pilar, is a modern, 
seventeenth century structure, reminding one of a 
section of St. Paul's in London. It is overloaded 
with gilt, paintings, lamps, shrines, chapels, and 
sculpture. The Virgin used to come down and 
visit this favored place in the good old times, 
whence the church, and the stone is still shown — 
now transferred and set in the wall for the devout 
to kiss — on which she alighted ! A lady knelt 
and kissed it while the guide was telling me this. 
It is just as well : why not ? 

The La Sea cathedral stands in a quaint square, 
with the archbishop's palace on one side and the 
ancient lonja or exchange opposite. 



32 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

All imaginable styles run riot over the facade 
of this cathedral : Corinthian pillars surmounted 
by prophets and apostles, bits of antique Mau- 
resque brick-work, Romanesque and Byzantine 
buttresses and apsis, light and elegant allegori- 
cal statues on the eight-sided tower ; in short, it 
is not exactly a mass of 'fricasseed marble,' but 
something strangely like the w2X\on2X puchero or 
Spanish hash. It is with strange surprise that 
one enters the dingy little door stuck in a cor- 
'ner of the church, and suddenly finds oneself 
breathed and blown upon by the delightful at- 
mosphere of the shaded interior, with its dis- 
tances and altitudes, its severe and sombre antiq- 
uity, its grand air of breadth, the boldness of the 
arches, and its splendid recollections of by-gone 
tinies. The kings of Aragon were crowned here. 
An alabaster retablo stands behind the choir with 
its effigied multitude, devout relievos and elabo- 
rately wrought seats, organ and lectern. The 
grandeur of the cathedral is greatly diminished 
when one has done looking up into the pillared 
sky of the roof, and turns to the side chapels to 
be met by tawdry pictures, greasy candelabra, 
and dingy gilt. 

The legend goes that the Del Pilar cathedral 
was founded by Santiago after the crucifixion, 
who came to Spain and preached the gospel in 
the first century. The Virgin appeared to him 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 33 

mounted on a pillar of jasper, surrounded by an- 
gels. A conversation ensued, in which she ex- 
pressed a desire for a chapel on this spot, which 
Santiago courteously erected, — small and unpre- 
tentious at first, then more and more costly, till in 
1686 it grew into the present Del Pilar Cathedral. 
Nothing can be uglier than the domes on the roof 
with their white, green, and yellow tiles, sug- 
gestions of a series of soap-boilers. The great 
heart of Don Juan of Austria lies buried here, and 
there is a very fine alabaster retablo by Fument. 
The Holy Image worshiped in this cathedral has 
a wardrobe worthy of Elizabeth, — pearls, dia- 
monds, necklaces, mantas, silks, and satins ; and 
the devout gaze at her blazing shrine through a 
reja or balustrade of massy silver. As I stood and 
looked at the curious scene a troop of Catalonian 
peasants in velvet knee-breeches open at the knee, 
long white stockings, sandals, gorgeous sash, with 
the long Santa Claus-like Catalan cap, came by 
and bent the knee. One of them unwound his 
sash, took out a copper cuarto and threw it over 
the silver railing at the feet of — what? the Santa 
Imagen. She did not bow as the wooden doll 
of Montserrat did to the Infanta of Spain ; but 
one could not help being touched by the simple 
piety of the poor fellow. He made the offering 
out of a full heart and (doubtless) a by no means 
3 



34 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

plenteous pocket: Peter's pence require Job's 
patience. 

The streets swarm with the vermin evoked by 
the most catholic injunction to be charitable. 
One longs for a cleansing law disfranchising beg- 
gary ! Spain would be half redeemed from her 
worst enemy — herself. You can hardly step out 
of your hotel without treading on some suppli- 
cant. The ingenious devices resorted to by the 
blind, the lame, and the halt to collect alms, — 
the bags, boxes, plates, and nets suspended round 
every limb of their unimaginable bodies, held out, 
rattled imperiously, or attached to some point of 
support, — are a never-ending study. Hundreds 
of years of such doings have produced great skill 
in this privileged class ; half the same spent in 
good honest work w^ould have developed the coun- 
try and fed the people who now every twenty steps 
elevate their deformities as if they were a host, 
and instead of the charity they expect, get sim- 
ply — horror and detestation. The streets should 
be cleaned of such things and the hospitals filled 
with them, where the wretched nuclei of peram- 
bulating disease could be cured and attended to. 
As it is, crooked feet, ophthalmia, limbs distorted 
in eveiy conceivable manner, masquerade on the 
street like a carnival of death, and are regarded 
by their happy possessors as a true fortune. A 
cure would no doubt in many cases be stoutly 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 35 

resisted, for then the blind would have to see, 
the lame to walk, and the halt to work. A Span- 
ish plaza where the liberal light throws broad 
shadows through the arcaded walk is the favorite 
resort of teeming mendicancy ; there is a beggar 
for every streak of light across the pavement and 
a beggar for every shadow, and apart from these 
a squadron of imps is employed by those who are 
too lazy to move, to adjure the promenader by 
everything on the face of the earth to stop and 
look at that object of charity yonder, to give the 
pobrecito a glance out of his blessed eyes and a li- 
mosna out of his most illustrious pocket, etc. You 
are tapped on the shoulder, addressed through 
the reja of the house-window, assailed at the 
entrances to shops, and beleaguered at church 
doors. I had heard and read of Spanish beg- 
gars, but I had never, as the ministers say, ^real- 
ized ' them before. Nor is there that excuse for 
this class which was urged in the sixteenth century 
by one of their great writers : * La hermosiira tiene 
fuerza de despertar la caridad dormida : Beauty 
hath power to awaken sleeping charity.' But then 
one may add with the same writer : 'De todo hay 
en el mimdo : There 's something of everything in 
the world.' 

Apropos of a famous mystery acted in the La 
Sea Cathedral before Ferdinand and Isabella dur- 
ing the Christmas of 1487, occurs an item in the 



36 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

archives of the cathedral, which curiously illus- 
trates the spirit of the age. The mystery repre- 
sented the Nativity of Christ and the archive 
reads as follows : ' Seven sneldos (sous) for mak- 
ing up the heads of the bullock and donkey, in 
the stable at Bethlehem ; six sueldos for wigs for 
those who are to represent the prophets ; ten 
sueldos for six pairs of gloves to be worn by the 
angels.' 



III. 

But lordes and knyghtes and othere noble and worthi men, that conne 
not Latyn but litylle, and ban ben beyonde the see, knowen and un- 
derstonden if I seye trouthe or no, and if I erre in devisynge, for forget- 
ynge, or elles ; that they may redress it and amende it. — Sir John 
Maundeville, Prologue. 

What a lovely old place is Tarragona ! I 
dropped in here last night in the dark and woke 
up to find myself transported to Carthaginian, 
Roman, and imperial times. I cannot understand 
Hare's volubility of abuse lavished on the town, 
for in just such seldom visited places lie the trav- 
eler's most frequent surprises. This is the Car- 
thaginian Tarchon, the winter residence of Au- 
gustus in one of his rambles, the old town that 
clung to Ponipey — * ein Madchen, das an meiner 
Brust mit Aeugeln schon dem Nachbar sich ver- 
bindet ' ^ — and then kissed Caesar,*^ the residence 
of Roman propraetors, the capital of Roman 
Spain, the scene of once great prosperity, a hill 
of palaces, theatres, aqueducts, and temples, now 
no more. The town runs all over a hill some 
eight hundred feet high, commanding the most 
lovely views of the vast and pallid Mediterranean 

^ Faust. 2 Hare, Wanderings in Spain, 



38 . SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

at its foot, and the garden-like Campo de Tarra- 
gona towards Valencia. It is surrounded by high 
walls, with gates, bastions, battlements, and forts, 
relics of one and another time, left here to be- 
come infinitely picturesque and mellow in this 
balmy light. 

The street in which the hotel lies, called, like 
so many other Spanish High streets, the Rambla^ 
from the rivulet that once flowed through it, — 
like the Fleet in London, — • runs in a straight line 
to two of these gates, through whose spacious 
arches delightful views may be had, at the one end 
of the blue-fired sea, at the other of the wonder- 
fully fertile plain and mountains of Tarragona ; 
opposite are the quarters for the infantry, and all 
the morning most charming music has been float- 
ing through the hotel windows, as battalion after 
battalion of red-legged fellows marched into the 
adjacent church to attend military mass. As 
soon as mass was over the band broke out into 
tuneful dance music, and I looked down into the 
street and saw two tiny damsels chassee-ing up 
to each other on the brilliant, sunlit pavement. 
The immensely broad window of my room has a 
balcony with iron railing, over which is let down 
f roni above — as usual in these Spanish towns of 
fluttering curtains and mysterious half-lights — 
a broad green persiana, giving ample ventilation, 
light, and protection from inquisitive eyes. You 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 39 

can look up the street and see hundreds of the 
same sort, of every hue and color and material. 
Nothing can be more interesting than the per- 
spective of one of these streets with the innumer- 
able rain-spouts reaching out over the sidewalk, 
the twinkling and swaying curtains sweeping 
down from windows high and low, the bits of 
ancient sculptured wall, with here and there a 
splendid grape-vine growing out of them, rooted 
twenty feet above your head ; a garden, over 
whose wall hangs a peaceful and mighty palm, a 
bastion planted with rows of light-leaved china- 
trees, a palace looking on the sea out of a laby- 
rinth of mimosa, aloe, cactus, orange, and myrtle ; 
a portal with the lions and lilies of Spain graven 
in marble over it, a long plaza which was once 
the great Roman Circus, but is now given up 
t© soldiers, civilians, and fountains ; a strange 
church steeple in glazed green and yellow tiles, 
with its peal of bells hanging out through grouped 
windows ; a palace of the archbishop or the cap- 
tain general, with severe and solemn stillness 
reigning about it ; a flight of marble steps sur- 
mounted at the top by the glorious cathedral ; an 
oriel window high up on the side of a house, 
through which there is a glimpse of square, grated 
openings, as of a prison ; a gallery running across 
the street and connecting two odd Tarragonese 
houses by its umbilical cord, — in short, a series 



40 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

of very pleasant and very striking illustrations of 
Spanish street architecture, life, and custom. The 
whole livelong day, nearly, bells have been ring- 
ing, bands playing, congregations hearing mass, 
and the streets filling with people. A neighbor- 
ing fife has been continually cutting its musical 
zigzag on the air as if the fifer were writing ara- 
besques and monogrammed initials in sound on 
the crystalline atmosphere ; then wild clashing 
of silvery bells from the groaning tartanas^ — a 
vehicle of Arab origin ; then murmurous and 
multitudinous talk welling up from the street be- 
low, from the people sitting before the inns and 
shops. Early morning and late evening are the 
noisiest times in Spain ; the middle of the day is 
consecrated to in-doors. 

Apart from the antiquity of the place, the tomb 
of the Scipios, and the noble Roman bridge in thfe 
vicinity, the special object of a sojourn here is 
the grand Norman Gothic Cathedral and clois- 
ters of the thirteenth century, truly a 

* Santo templo del immortal Amor ' 

of that sweetest of the old Spanish poets, Fra 
Luis de Leon. I do not know of a lovelier bit 
of color than is the outside of this noble mass ; 
the golden under-ground stain softened into pink 
and brown and mellow ochre by the hallowing 
touch of time. It has an unfinished look, indeed 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 4I 

is, externally, quite unfinished. It is approached 
by a flight of marble steps flanked by two very 
old fountains, and encrusted all about by vener- 
able houses. Could the envelope of close-cling- 
ing habitations with which it is built about be 
removed, the cathedral, cloisters, and adjacent 
churches might almost rival Pisa. The entrance 
is by a deep-recessed door divided in the middle 
by a column which supports a canopied Virgin, 
above whom sits Christ, looking rather supercil- 
iously, it must be confessed, down on the Holy 
Mother. A score of life-sized saints and apos- 
tles, some with books, some with scrolls and 
swords, stand under canopies round the upper 
part of the door, and receive the visitor with all 
manner of smirk and salutation. Long black 
curtains wave before the entrance, and when 
these are drawn aside and you enter, the effect is 
very striking. This cathedral is nothing like 
those of Barcelona and Saragossa : it is plain, 
three-aisled, majestic in its gray and grave sim- 
plicity, illumined by stained glass three hundred 
years old, and three superb rose windows j and 
there are massive buttresses out of which shoot 
pillars with elaborate capitals which in succes- 
sion give birth to the ribbed and groined vault. 
The church is cross-shaped, and high up the 
jeweled windows distill their painted dew till, at 
sunset, the upper domes are a fountain of color. 



42 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

There is not the mystery and gloom of the Sara- 
gossa Cathedral nor the reverential stillness ; all 
is large-limbed, massy, and revealed. There is 
beautiful carving around several of the chapels, 
and high altar, choir-stalls, and pulpits, all de- 
serve regard. Attracted towards a candle burn- 
ing in one of the side chapels, you are half terri- 
fied to find yourself gazing on the undecomposed 
corpse of San Olaguer in a glass case, lying be- 
fore you surrounded by gigantic figures in stone, 
so life-like that they look as if about to speak. 
A box with * Limo sua para la Tierra Santa ' writ- 
ten on it lies at the saint's feet. 

After you have done wandering under the heavy 
Norman arches, a door to the left is glimpsed, 
which leads to the glory of Tarragona and the 
rival of the Campo Santo and Westminster — the 
cloisters. What a delightful retreat for monkish 
feet in those olden days of yore ! For one hun- 
dred and eighty-six feet on four sides the clois- 
ters extend, embracing in their caressing arms 
one of the most old-fashioned of cathedral gar- 
dens. It is all a tangle of box and ivy hedges, 
cypress, orange, and sweet scented herbs and 
flowers, — a perfume box for the poetic old 
monks, and a fragment of thirteenth century 
sweetness for us. The gem of this cloister is 
the series of arches supported by sheaves of del- 
icate marble pillars, which runs around it, and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 



43 



has given birth to a world of charming imagin- 
ings in the curiously carved capitals. The Gothic 
imagination has gone mad in these traceries : 
fighting cocks, mice burying the cat, cooing 
doves, eagles standing on hares, geese plucking 
owls, serpents interwined, masques, fruits, flow- 
ers, the star and story of Bethlehem, fighting 
gladiators, satirical scenes from monkish leg- 
ends. All these have gathered into tiny tab- 
leaux on these remarkable capitals, and lend 
grace to the buttresses on which the six large 
ogive arches rest, together with the groined roof. 
Small Norman windows, Moorish basket-work, 
Roman capitals, vestiges here and there of the 
palace of Augustus and a mosque, are scattered 
up and down the cloisters ; while along the frame- 
work on the garden side run arabesques, den- 
tellated work of various patterns, and gracious 
Moorish ornamentation. It was full of people 
this cloudless Sunday morning, and through the 
open Byzantine door leading from it into the 
cathedral pealed the sweet-toned organ, like the 
stained glass, more than three hundred years old. 
I visited it again this evening and found the floor 
studded with kneeling sefioras and senoritas, 
nearly all with the national fan and lace head- 
dress. The evening sun streamed in gloriously 
through the windows and left its iridescent blaze 
along the cloister wall. 



IV. 

The surviving shadow of the Bull- God is as the shadow of death 
on past and passing ages. — Swinburne, Essays. 

Never dream you have seen Spain till your 
eyes have rested on Valencia. Here you are 
fortunately rid of cathedrals, and your eye dwells 
solely on the inexhaustible beauty of landscape, 
huerta^ and sea. The approach from Barcelona 
is unrivaled, and should never be made by night, 
however hot it is. The railroad winds with all 
manner of languishing and serpentining along the 
labyrinthine coast, and involves in its folds most 
enjoyable glimpses of the great lazy Mediterra- 
nean, the lamb-fleece sky, the scarred and castel- 
lated sea-shore, and the teeming wealth of the 
unexhausted soil. After the desert between Sar- 
agossa and Lerida such a bath and brilliance 
of verdure is beyond description. It looks as if 
the whole wealth of Spain had unlocked itself 
upon this land of fruit and flowers, and had sud- 
denly broken out in vast plantations reaching as 
far as the eye can see, — thanks to the heirloom 
of thorough irrigation bequeathed by the Moors to 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 45 

their most Christian descendants. The land is a 
network of canals, water-wheels, ditches, and rivu- 
lets furnished by the various rivers that take their 
way through this jewel of Spain j distribution of 
water is under government control ; and though 
the highways in summer whiten and glisten with 
insufferable dust, — cast a glance across them 
and see to what greenness and gloriousness water 
can bring things, — the ablutionary apple of the 
Moor's eye, and the principle which he so gener- 
ously applied to assist the good gift of Allah. 

The train moves (not too fast !) through a most 
picture-like country — the scenery and spacious 
^ envelope of Barcelona, with the Llobregat zig- 
zagging across it and touching its roots with be- 
neficent moisture. On the right hand dances 
the exquisite apparition of Montserrat ethere- 
alized and poetized by distance, perhaps unique 
in the history of mountain-groups ; a cluster of 
mountains faintly resembling the thousand-pin- 
nacled Mil^an Cathedral, though incomparably 
finer, staining the sky with its sharp and sudden 
blues, its evening towers and ambient heights, its 
transformations into unimaginable shapes as you 
gaze on it from the ever-changing track, its shrine 
and fortress-like convent, the hermitages and 
grottoes ; you know not what to call it or say of 
it, for it suggests everything fantastic as it looms 
hazy-clear across the trail of this divine atmos- 



46 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

phere, an element of poetry and devotion in a 
landscape so given up to worldly needs. Silius 
Italicus's * Divisque propinqicas rupes ' come to 
mind in looking at it. Then ancient towns are 
approached, such as Martorell, with its fine Ro- 
man bridge called Puente del Diablo^ through 
whose arch of one hundred and thirty-three feet 
(a work of the Moors) the winged dragon of 
Montserrat is caught sight of soaring into the 
sky ; then Villafranca and the ruins of Saguntum, 
Tarragona, Tortosa (where the reino or king- 
dom of Valencia begins) ; then rich-wined Beni- 
carlo, whose famous juice connoisseurs tell us 
goes to build up the bloodless Macon of Bur- 
gundy ; then Alcala, where Hannibal swore ven- 
geance against the Romans, Castellon, and other 
stations. To describe this journey would be to 
write the words rice, citron, almond, pomegran- 
ate, vine, fig, orange, olive, and mulberry a hun- 
dred times over. The country is undulating till 
the province of Valencia is reached, when it lev- 
els out into an emerald floor of two hundred and 
forty square leagues ; rich in silk, fruit, grain, and 
wine, where you see quaint little straw-thatched 
huts as in Normandy (^ Parva^ sed apta mihi^ 
stood written over Ariosto's door), each sur- 
mounted by a cross or a palm-leaf, to keep the 
lightning off ; churches and towers embowered 
in green, groups of magnificent palms shooting 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 47 

heavenward from the surrounding flatness, fields 
of flax, carob, alfalfa (mowed five or six times 
annually), melons, maize, avenues of mulberries 
and forests of oranges, a world of vegetable 
wealth compensating for the rarity of minerals. 
The railroad breaks its way with difiiculty through 
the thicket of opposing growth, every foot of 
which is sending up something to blossom and 
ripen in the powerful sun, or scent the summer 
air. I had imagined the * Valencianets ' lazy and 
careless ; they are anything else. 

The climate is a balm which seems to- stimulate 
rather than enervate ; and in spite of the culi- 
nary solecisms, such as chicken stewed with rice, 
the greasy ham with greasier eggs and tomatoes, 
the fish in the middle of the dinner, the soup 
made of floating reminiscences of yesterday, the 
enormous peppers devoured as if they were 
bread, the kabas, the chorizo, and the gazpacho 
(made of onions, vinegar, oil, bread, salt, and 
red pepper mixed together in water), etc., etc., 
the people seem healthy ; chills and fevers are 
frequent on account of the great humidity arising 
from the constant irrigation of many districts, 
and no doubt other sicknesses springing from the 
excessive use of fruit are prevalent ; but who 
without positively looking over the mortality ta- 
bles or going into the hospitals would suspect 
this voluptuous atmosphere of harm t It is the 



48 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

softest, sunniest, sweetest air in the world ; the 
sea distills its honeyed coolness into it, and fills 
it with pleasant salt scents, — there is a saffron 
mist of white pervasive Ught dwelling over it, 
hamlets nestled in cypress and palm lie around 
the mother city like so many hovering chicks ; 
bright costumed and mantillaed senoras move 
about with oriental lightness ; there is perpetual 
peal of church-bells, mass-going, picturesque chaf- 
fering in the strangest old markets and market- 
places in the world ; market-places sometimes 
surrounded by a lonja with a mighty clock bedded 
in plateresque carving looking out strangely still 
across the bustling plaza, and a series of fluted 
and twisted pillars running up into a groined 
ceiling which canopies many a scene worthy of 
Sir David Wilkie ; then the streets wind like the 
thread on a spool of cotton, round and round 
until they meet in the same place, or expand like 
pebble-struck water into wider and wider rings 
until the towered and battlemented wall is 
reached, w^here the octroi stand in the sculptured 
gates and pierce the contents of every peasant's 
cart with a long thin blade, to keep out the con- 
traband ; then the boddiced women with their 
classic jugs held slantwise under the arm w^ait 
their turn around the fountains or lay their jugs 
in long rows on the side till their turn comes, or 
your wandering feet bring you to the alameda 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 49 

(lit, alley of poplar-trees) along the river where 
the fashionables promenade from sundown to 
midnight, and where you see every style from 
Jouvin kids to the many-colored manta and al- 
pargatas (hempen sandals) of the sashed and 
waistcoated peasant, head in gay silk handker- 
chief, and legs orientally loose in huge trousers. 
There is no lack of artistic bits ! Try to gather 
up one of the dissolving views as they appeared 
the other night on the occasion of the great July 
Fair in the wondrously illuminated alameda of 
Valencia ; catch the multitudinous booth scenes, 
the fanning and flowing mistresses of an Alba- 
cete knife establishment dealing out wares to as- 
tonished and simple-faced paisanos^ or a dim ta- 
ble full of roulette-players staking the last cuarto 
in the light of a wind-blown lamp, fascinated by 
the hope of gain ; or a brilliant pavilion where 
there is a rifa (raffle) going on amid a glittering 
heap of treasures at two reals a chance, the 
numbers being little rolled cigarette-like papers 
which you draw out of a large glass jar ; all which 
is to buy Nuestra Senora de los Desamparados 
(Our Lady of the Forsaken, the national saint) 
a new gown or a splendid manta, while Valencia 
streets (mark you) are swarming with beggars. 
Pictures and pictures might be made out of all 
this, not to speak of the chalets and pabellones 
all ablaze with chandeliers and crimson curtains, 
4 



50 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

where the fair Valenciennes dance to titillating 
music during this great festival ; the gay little 
horchateria gardens where ices of all sorts are dis- 
pensed, and the estoque booths, where an unceas- 
ing stream of men and boys are purchasing ivory- 
headed bamboo canes or heavy hooked shillalahs 
for the corrida de toros (bull-fight) to-morrow. 
Agua fresquita ! (here's your cold water!) rends 
the air from yarr^-bearing women ; Fosforos ! fos- 
foros ! (matches ! matches !) from boys in blouses 
gleaming phosphorically about along the dusky 
walks. It is a ten or eleven days' carnival in July 
for the kind-hearted Valencian people, whose af- 
fability, gayety, quick temper, and ready poniards 
are so well-known. It is not much to say they 
are imaginative, for that one sees everywhere 
in their highly-colored phraseology, dress, jewels, 
proverbs, and churches j nor nervous, for they are 
fidgetty as tarantulas ; nor excitable, for their 
broad Limousin-like dialect, — so like the old 
Provencal of Bartsch's Chrestomathie Proven- 
gale — resounds on the streets in high key all 
day and all night long. I never saw graceful! er, 
tinier women, brighter eyes, or more beautiful 
hair, — like silk \ and among the peasant women 
the long plaits at the back are held together by 
a silver pin, to which a very gorgeous silver comb 
of quaint design gives greater accent. 

At the plaza de toros, or bull-ring, in Valencia, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 5 I 

I saw a big burly countryman with shirt buttons 
of clustered pearls in front, — a confirmation of 
what I had read, that many of the peasants wear 
jewels and stones of classic form and great value 
handed down as heir-looms from a considerable 
antiquity. The tinkling guitar and clashing cas- 
tanets are heard ever3^where, from the poor blind 
men leaning pathetically over the fence which 
separates the railway from the road, where they 
stand and play in the hope of beguiling a copper 
out of the traveler when the train stops, to the 
wanderers that make the music in the streets 
under the balconies and hotel windows, even be- 
fore one is up in the morning. Take it in good 
humor, for it is better than begging, and there 
is so much beggary in this blessed land. 

I saw my first corrida de toros in Valencia 
— and my last ? I think so, for the present. 
To think of such verdure, and verdura es came, 
says a Valencian prov-erb, being watered by such 
blood ! Perhaps the passionate wealth of vege- 
tation springs from such fertilization ? But then 
the tawny blaze and barrenness of the rest of 
Spain, — sterilized and saffronized Castile, sandy 
Navarre, and the yellow mourning of glowing 
Cordova. It is a land of contrasts ; now the 
green magic of England, now the glooms and 
eternal fatigues of Siberia, now enormous and 
luscious fruit, now leagues on leagues of hope- 



52 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

less railway travel past station after station and 
town after town, without even a drop of water 
or a grain of mustard-seed to be had for love 
or money. And you gaze out over the endless 
illuminated mountains, ribbed and fluted like a 
Gothic cathedral, and lighted from morning till 
evening with the most exquisite effects of painted 
distance and pallid purple air, parched in throat 
and panting for breath, willing to give your poor 
little kingdom of a purse for just one peach ! 
But it is Spain always and ever, remember that. 
Carry water-jugs and fruit-baskets and alleviat- 
ing comforts with you, or suffering the martyr- 
dom of San Sebastian will be luxury to it. One 
looks on grilled San Lorenzos and blazing Smith- 
fields with utter indifference in comparison with 
summer traveling in this sun-struck peninsula. 

The first corrida de toros in Valencia ! It was 
an experience. Walking one evening down the 
busy Rambla of Barcelona,- 1 saw posted up be- 
side one of the railway ticket offices a large vari- 
egated advertisement, telling with the true Ibe- 
rian pomp of adjectives of the great feria (fair) 
at Valencia during the last eleven days of July, 
during which wonders were to take place. First, 
and foremost, the great fair of Santo Somebody, 
patron of Spain, then immense display of fire- 
works, dancing alfresco^ opening of museums and 
botanic gardens, gala nights at the theatres, con- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 53 

certs, competitions of various kinds, and last and 
best, three days' bull-fighting ' initiated ' by the 
celebrated espadas^ Lagartijo and Frascuelo, as- 
sisted by the bmiderilleros Calderon and Temp- 
lao, the picadores Mariano, Agutejas, etc. Con- 
sidering that the most solemn funeral mass for 
the repose of the soul of Dona Mercedes, Queen 
of Spain, had just been performed in Barcelona 
Cathedral, this advertisement struck a foreigner 
as rather curious. The sweet young queen, so 
beloved, so ill-fated, hardly cold in the mauso- 
leum of the Escorial, and the good Valencianets 
a-thirst for Santiago and his bulls ! I confess I 
did not feel the regret which I should have felt. 
To depart without seeing a bull-fight was to have 
the mere shell of the almond. I thirsted with 
true Spanish ferocity to gaze on the triumphant 
scene and go away with its noble enthusiasms, its 
rigid excitements, its hair-breadth and hair-split- 
ting escapes indelibly branded on my memory, 
— and so they have been. 

Thousands — without exaggeration — flew to 
Valencia from all parts of Spain ; half-fare tickets 
brought in throngs of Carthaginian and Berber- 
looking peasants from the populous Mediterra- 
nean lands ; Barcelona, Tarragona, Alicante, and 
Albacete emptied themselves into the first, sec- 
ond, and third-class cars to be disgorged in the 
great plaza de toros in Valencia. The occasion 



54 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

had been advertised far and wide, and every 
mode of getting to the city was utilized to bring 
in the pious pilgrims. At first I thought I should 
buy tickets in advance for the whole three days ; 
but second thought suggested the prudence of a 
trial before investing the sixty reals necessary 
for this worthy purpose. The sequel rather justi- 
fied than put this prudence to shame. We were 
particularly favored at the Hotel de la Villa de 
Madrid by having the whole officiating troupe in 
the hotel with us, including the great Lagartijo 
and Frascuelo themselves, men of national repu- 
tation, the Kean and Kemble of the bull-ring. 
As heroes of the bull-ring they sustain the same 
reputation among men in Spain as Patti and 
Nilsson among singers in the fashionable femi- 
nine world ; strong, stalwart, dark-faced fellows, 
with sinews of steel, eyes quick as light, and step 
agile as a cat's. One of the camareros of the very 
dirty hotel (the best, however in Valencia) in- 
formed me of their presence with no little awe of 
manner. They were his Shakspere. The din- 
ner-table was crowded with their suite, and the 
usually so stagnant Spanish hotel life, even in 
bright Valencia, had roused itself to something 
like energy. How^ the waiters danced about their 
distinguished guests, pointed out this or that one 
to admiring strangers, whispered among them- 
selves, laughed at the bon 7?iots of the arena, and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 55 

envied the most enviable of mortals who had 
tickets to the heavenly entertainment ! I made 
one of them infinitely happy by presenting him 
with a ticket, and telling him in national phrase, 
* Vaya usted con JDiosJ His eyes sparkled, and 
that day I noticed my room utterly neglected 
(he had previously attended to it) and the trans- 
ported waiter absent, — no doubt gloating in the 
summer sun over the huge ellipse of the plaza de 
toros I 

It is of no use to talk of bull-fighting being on 
the decline in Spain ; it is not, and it cannot be. 
The hair of the Spaniard has not deeper roots 
than his love of it. Talk to Spaniards of aver- 
age intelligence about the matter, and they will 
all agree with you that it is horrible, but they will 
every one go, and that every time they have a 
chance. This is not the worst of it. Perhaps 
the most ardent upholders of the custom are 
the women, from Isabel II. — whose head seems 
hardly fit for anything but a debased Spanish 
copper — to the graceful girls of saloon life, and 
the poor washer-woman who is fortunate enough 
to have saved up two pesetas to buy a place in 
the sun. On the day of the fight the ring outside 
is surrounded by a crew of boys crazy to get in, 
hanging there in the fascinating hope that some- 
body will sicken and come out and give them a 
ticket. Pictures of it are on every fan, in every 



56 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

shop, before every imagination, on the great day, 
— generally a day of incomparable brilliance, of 
thin, warm air wherein everything is marvelously 
still and statuesque and sweet, a day when no 
palm waves or yellow gold of acacia-hedges trem- 
bles on the mute Spanish plains. The season 
lasts from April till November, the beautiful sum- 
mer being from one end to the other trailed in 
blood. Being the intense people they are, — 
each one of them is a revolution, a charge of 
gunpowder, a human torpedo in himself, — the 
Spaniards must have excitements of a peculiar 
kind. They have always used dirks and poniards 
freely ; they gamble inordinately in lotteries, at 
rifas^ and in the name of alms and Holy Church, 
they are devoted to cock-fighting, and give up 
Sundays and Thursdays to it ; they have a sort 
of Irish nature, deeply stained with the ardors 
and irritations and exaltations of the South ; un- 
practical, isolated, ignorant, and imaginative, their 
language is a trope, their light is a taper before 
the shrine of the Purissima Virgin, their blood is 
a scarlet fever, their pleasures are torments. As 
a nation they were born under the star Sirius. 
They live, move, and have their being in an air 
of flame ; the wine is a sweet fire that climbs in- 
stantaneously to the brain, an alcoholized syrup 
which melts ice like a liquid blaze, beautifully 
colored with the Unto and bianco of the wine- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 5/ 

merchant ; a bottled treachery to him who knows 
it not and drinks and drinks the amorous fluid 
till he is suddenly giddy — and the wine laughs. 
Millions of animals and animal passions shut in 
from the time when Caesar defeated Pompey's 
sons at Merida till the present day — shut in, 
save that radiant efflux that went forth to find 
America and the Indies ; rarely traveling or 
seeing anything of the world but themselves \ 
separated into sharply marked provinces by the 
high sierras ; in a land of no books ; lying a-bed 
with priests sixteen hundred years, and having 
eternal aves and angeluses rung in their ears ; 
from everlasting to everlasting telling beads on 
their knees in gorgeous cathedrals that strike 
emotional chords only in the human breast, — 
such a life of indolence and unintellectuality 
could not but blossom out into this evil fruit just 
as we see it ; and one of the hugest and crim- 
sonest blossoms is the bull-fight. It is curious 
to what elaboration of detail this national sport 
has given rise, to what slang, what technicality, 
what peculiar terms to distinguish your specialist 
from the ignorant amateur. A whole dictionary 
of terms and distinctions has sprung up to char- 
acterize its successive stages of brutality : the 
implements used, the costumes w^orn, the en- 
trances and exits and triumphs and falls. Vol- 
umes circulate to give the aficcionado due infor- 



58 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

mation about each shade of the performance. 
Boys know it from the time they can say their 
prayers and their parents begin to take them 
(which is very early) ; and they follow every 
movement of the bull and his tormentors with in- 
telligence. A pretty good Spanish scholar is 
sometimes at a loss to translate these technicali- 
ties, and has to apply to some frequenter of the 
plaza — that is, to anybody in Spain — to ex- 
plain them j which is always done with suavity 
and gravity, for the hidalgo is the pink of sad- 
faced courtesy. If a mistake is made during a 
performance an incredible outburst of derision, 
indignation, and hissing is the result, often so 
sudden that one is involved in it before any 
reason is discerned, so intense is the general at- 
tention and appreciation. If a Naples audience 
is the severest trial in the world for a singer, 
send your bull-fighter to Valencia ! None but ex- 
perts can stand before this immense assemblage 
and hope to escape unwithered by blighting con- 
tempt. 

The plaza de toros stands just at the station 
and is a large amphitheatre, nearly if not quite 
circular. Its capacity is eighteen thousand peo- 
ple. In form it greatly resembles the Coliseum ; 
it is built of stone and brick, unstuccoed, is 
entirely open to the sky and contains a vast 
arena surrounded by a slope of some twenty-five 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 59 

rows of seats, widening as they extend upward. 
Above these rise two covered galleries, one 
above the other, with deep rows of seats, some 
al sol, others a la somhra as the phrase is. 
Three or four corridors for promenading, which 
look out over the city, extend all around the 
amphitheatre, and admit to the inside by nu- 
merous doors and vomitoria. The work is of the 
plainest and most matter-of-fact description ; it 
means business ; and save for the unnumbered 
yellow-and-red flags of Spain, which encircle the 
edge of the highest gallery and wave or hang list- 
lessly in the stilled air, there is no ornamentation. 
The arena is smooth as a piece of brown paper 
and is sanded and rolled everywhere. It is sep- 
arated from the amphitheatre by a valla or parti- 
tion about five feet high, made of board an inch 
or so thick, within which, at regular intervals, 
there are gates to shut off the bull in case the in- 
furiated beast leaps the barrier. I should have 
said that the amphitheatre does not abut directly 
on the valla, but there is a corridor six or eight 
feet wide in between and then comes the amphi- 
theatre, with its partition somewhat higher than 
the valla and surmounted by a rope. Whether 
the seats here are specially desired or not, I do 
not know ; the holders of them seem often in 
great danger. The corridor is full of officials, 
police, people, attendants, and the particularly 



6o SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

favored, who are obliged to keep a very sharp 
lookout on the bull lest he leap over and tear 
them to pieces. 

Of course all Valencia was in grand gala on 
the opening day ; the station where the incoming 
and outgoing trains brought in and took out pas- 
sengers did not exactly, as the local Diario de 
Valencia said, present a magnificent (and com- 
mon as dirt in Castilian) spectacle, but certainly 
a very lively one. Sight-seers came in great 
force ; the station did not pretend to be long 
enough for the trains, and many had to walk a 
quarter of a mile before reaching the salida ap- 
propriated to them. No sooner had they emerged 
from the station than they were stopped in the 
square adjoining by ticket-sellers uttering loud 
cries and immediately collecting a crowd of pur- 
chasers around them. I had sallied forth early 
in order to secure a ticket, as the sale lasted 
from nine till twelve only. To a Spaniard such 
a matter is a trifle ; but to one unacquainted 
with the names, positions, and technicalities be- 
longing to the occasion, purchasing a ticket in 
such a multitude of fanning, perspiring, clamor- 
'ing, haggling bourgeois was no easy matter. I 
finally succeeded. On the outside of the wall 
encircling the plaza de toros stand written in 
large letters al Sol and a la Sombra j myste- 
rious technicalities, full of importance to the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 6 1 

knower and lover of bull-fights, and occasion of 
many a heart-rending mistake to the uninitiated. 
The explanation is this : In Spain, bull-fights 
generally take place at half-past three or four 
o'clock in the afternoon, and the amphitheatre is 
so built (the stars even entering into its con- 
struction !) that one side of it shall catch the sun, 
and the other the shade. Hence al sol means ' to 
the sun,' a la sombra * to the shade.' From this 
arises a considerable difference in the price of 
seats ; the al sol seats are sold at eight reals, 
the a la sombra, on the street for anything the 
scamps can get over twenty reals, but are put 
down officially at thirteen reals and a half, for 
which doubtless they are seldom obtained, being 
bought up by speculators. Cries, therefore, of 
Al sol! al sol I a la sombra. I a la S07nbra ! meet 
the puzzled new arrivals, and up and down they 
go, gazing, country-bumpkin fashion, and wishing 
either that they were in Jericho, or that they had 
a friend to explain all this mystery. At half-past 
two or three the gates are thrown open and 
from that time till the performance begins, the 
city sends a thousand rivulets of hastening and 
hurrying life to fill up the great reservoir before 
us. Dust indescribable, of course, is the first 
thing met with ; then the gendarmes in their cu- 
rious one-sided hats ; then the ticket-receivers ; 
then comes the search for the special angulo or 



62 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

division marked on the ticket, with the accom- 
panying gree or round of the slope where the seat 
is situated ; and woe to him who comes late ! 
Such individuals are apt to be greeted by push- 
ing and hard words, for it is next to impossible 
to get along, so close together are the rounds 
and so dense their population. Many towns, 
with all their men, women, and children could 
get into a great amphitheatre like this, and have 
plenty of room to spare. Inside, the scene is 
really extraordinary. On one side blazes the pit- 
iless sun, ' por el amor de Dios ; ' hence innumer- 
able umbrellas of all colors, parasols, gigantic 
fans big enough for Bartholdy's Liberty enlight- 
ening the World, each containing a furious bull- 
fight on its sunlit radii, converge into a huge semi- 
circle of brilliant and breathing life. Many of 
the umbrellas are bright crimson ; the dresses are 
of all colors ; everything is in motion ; soldiers in 
glittering uniforms sit together gregariously here 
and there, forming focuses of accentuated color ; 
gold and silver combs, bodices, mantillas, jewels, 
the flash of falling light on precious stones, the 
gay and various-tinted mantas, the velvet coats, 
wide sombreros, and walking-sticks of the peas- 
ants, form one of those mighty combinations such 
as one sees in the teeming canvases of Tinto- 
retto. Motion, Motion, Motion, is written every- 
where in capital letters and is caught aslant from 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 63 

the innumerable twinkle of the fans. On the 
other side the high walls of the structure cast re- 
freshing shade, coolness, convalescence as it were 
from the deadly violence of the sun : sombra, 
that sweetest of Spanish words, full as Christ- 
mas bonbonnieres with eloquence and restfulness. 
Here, too, are the fans, the mantas and mantillas, 
the velvet coats and ivory walking-sticks, and jew- 
els and precious stones, and mighty sombreros 
with their umbrella-like peripheries, and dons and 
donas ^ — light, perfume, loveliness, lustrous eyes, 
and Spanish grace ; but it is of the better class, 
the class that can throw away a duro on the sav- 
age scene, and go home glad of the privilege. 
Everybody has lunch, skins and bottles of wine, 
pockets full of bread and peaches, bottled lemon- 
ade, tortillas and sandwiches, for the performance 
lasts four hours, and will not be over till the poor, 
gay, long-suffering al sol people feel how delight- 
ful the shade of descending night is and their 
sun-shades are furled. Nothing is in stronger 
antithesis than this munching, eating, drinking 
multitude with their popping bottles and wild 
laughter, and the scene they have come to wit- 
ness, — doing all this, too, in the very thick of it. 
Nothing seems to pall or appal the appetite of 
a Spaniard. There were refined-looking women 
sitting in front of me who ate during some of the 
most frightful massacring of the afternoon. Per- 



64 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

haps human nature could not have stood it other- 
wise. And I, crouching behind my fan, in a cold 
sweat all over, sick, self-loathing, and unable to 
extricate myself from the crowd, sat in a sort of 
stupor for four hours, trying not to look, but 
every now and then irresistibly drawn to peep 
over the fan down on the hideous doings below. 
The Valencian who sat beside me hated and de- 
spised my chicken-heartedness and asked me if I 
should come ' to-morrow.' My other neighbor, a 
fat, funny old peasant in hempen sandals and 
knee-breeches took off his coat and sat the whole 
time talking aloud to himself, with eyes fastened 
on the arena and lips now and again uttering 
something wonderfully funny, as I judged from 
the laughter he caused : naivete itself, in a frame 
as big as the picture in the Vicar of Wakefield. 
He did not fail to break out into ferocious cries, 
like everybody else, when there was the least sign 
of vacillation or blundering. The Spaniard will 
have everything selon regie; and his bull-fight 
must be as thoroughly well done as his puchero 
or his gazpacho. 

A word or two about the order of the enter- 
tainment. First of all the fanfare of trumpets is 
heard precisely at four, when one of the vomitofia 
opens and out march in procession fifteen or 
twenty brilliantly dressed men who are to bear 
the brunt of the evening. The two far-famed 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 65 

maestri headed the procession, which marched to 
slow music across the arena to a position in front 
of the alcalde or mayor's box, where they stopped 
and went through the pantomime of asking the 
permission of the town authorities to begin the 
fight. This being graciously granted, another 
flare of trumpets, and out springs the llave^ or 
man bearing the key to the toril^ as the vomito- 
rium whence the bull is to leap forth is called, on 
a splendid gray charger. He is dressed in black, 
with cocked hat, black gloves, and waving black 
cloak. He is received with acclamation at first, 
then, if he lingers in the least, with stormy impa- 
tience ; he prances back as fast as he came, after 
having made his bow before the alcalde, who is 
called el presidente for the occasion. Then come 
a moment or two of intense expectation. A lit- 
tle behind the first procession, which is on foot, 
came in a troop of picadores^ or men armed with 
long pikes, on wretched steeds called arres (the 
word so often used for get up !) ; they go up 
to the alcalde's palcon and then trot around the 
arena as gayly as their miserable animals will 
allow, — poor beasts, doomed to the most horri- 
ble of deaths before the evening is over. (A sad 
substitute are both men and beasts for the true 
knights and noble steeds who in former days 
came down into the arena and fought.) The pro- 
cession consists of four classes of men : the espa- 
5 



66 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

das or swords, so called because it is their busi- 
ness to dispatch the bull at the end of the per- 
formance j the picadores, or me-n with pikes, who 
open the performance by stationing their horses, 
four in a row, with intervals of some yards be- 
tween, near the toril ; the chiilos^ or men with large 
cloak-like pieces of exasperating red, yellow, and 
purple cloth, to flaunt before the bull, madden and 
blind him, and then foil his terrific onslaughts ; 
and lastly, the men with darts (banderilleros)^ in- 
struments called in bull -ring slang ^ear-rings,' 
* wasps,' * appendices,' consisting of pieces of thin 
wire about a yard in length, prettily ornamented 
with light fluttering ribbons, with a sharp barb in 
one end, the design of which is to sting up the 
relaxed animal by plunging them two at a time 
into his shoulders ; an operation requiring infinite 
delicacy, tact, and quickness. The men who did 
this literally seemed to fly like butterflies, insert 
their intolerable barbs and then spring backward 
like winged Mercur}^s. It is done just as the bull 
lowers his head to toss his enemy to the sky. 

Bull-fights might be tolerated were it not for 
the first act of the sanguinary drama, — the poor 
horses stationed in dumb show, bandaged over 
one eye and perfectly unconscious of the exqui- 
site cruelty to which they are to be subjected. 
The human part of it, though full of danger and 
excitement, is somewhat extenuated by the ad- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 67 

mirable dexterity shown in foiling and eluding 
the bull, keeping him at bay, annoying him by 
darts and blinds, flying at him or from him. 
Strength, nimbleness, self-possession, and cour- 
age are all required and shown in an eminent 
degree. But to pick up twenty poor old horses 
out of the streets and stand them up blinded, to 
be gored to death by a savage brute, is an un- 
pardonable crime. One loathes and hates the 
Spanish people and government for allowing it. 
And what is to be said of the fathers and mothers 
who flock thither with their young children and 
teach them to gloat over this ghastly drama.'* 
Ought they not every one to be put on bread 
and water for the rest of their lives ? And the 
strange part of it was that a large part of the pro- 
ceeds w^ere to go on this occasion to the poor of 
the Santo Hospital, and the newspapers breathed 
the pious wish that the attendance might be large 
as the money was given for a good purpose ! The 
clergy often occupy the best seats, and priests 
hurry through masses to get to the ring in time. 
This devilish scene is perpetuated that the ' poor ' 
may be helped and the streets be further thronged 
with every species of lying and hypocritical men- 
dicancy. Every town of a few thousand inhabit- 
ants has its ring, its advertisements of toros de 
muerte Q bulls of death ') hanging on the street 
corners, its local espadas and bando'illeros^ and 



68 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

its churches and hospitals to be helped. This 
freak of diabolism, this amphitheatre dedicated 
to the devil, is, in Valencia, just behind a church, 
— indeed out of one into the other ! 

A bull that will not fight is greeted with inex- 
tinguishable hissing ; cries of Vacca I vacca ! 
fiiera ! fuera ! fuego I fuego ! resound on all sides ; 
and darts having barbs with explosives attached 
are plunged into the hesitating beast and goad 
him on to desperation. There was no occasion 
this special evening for the fire-darts. Eight mag 
nificent bulls leapt into the arena like tigers, one 
after the other, all showing fight, all with wild 
eyes, mighty horns, splendid heads and shoul- 
ders, and slender flanks, — incarnations of dar- 
ing and dazzling strength. As soon as the toril 
was opened, out bounded a grand tan-colored fel- 
low, a four-footed Hercules, and flew on the first 
horse with the ferocity of a hyena, goring him 
frightfully, and hurling him, rider and all, to the 
earth ; then he tried another \ then a chulo flapped 
his long, blinding cloth before the bull's eyes ; 
then a mad leap first at one man and horse and 
then at another ; then another horse instantane- 
ously killed and trampled to death ; then a ban- 
derillero made a hair-breadth escape as the flash 
of the formidable horns came close upon him ; 
then another picador in long, yellow buckskin 
breeches, gold or silver vest, and wide, brown 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 69 

sombrero, with blue or scarlet plume and scarlet 
sash, stationed his trembling beast before the in- 
satiable monster \ then another torrent of blood, 
and a poor, disemboweled, wretched creature trot- 
ted all around the circle, treading his own bowels 
to pieces ; then exulting and thundering cries from 
fifteen thousand spectators as the winged darts, 
two at a time, were inserted till the bull was cov- 
ered with blood and rushed round in agony; then 
a flare of trumpets ; then the espadas, resplendent 
in green and gold (Lagartijo) and purple and gold 
(Frascuelo), stepped forth with long, thin, steel 
swords, each having a gorgeous cloak which he 
flashed in the eyes and over the head and nostrils 
of the bull till he foamed with futile rage ; then 
as the bull lowered his head to dash his pursuers 
to pieces, down like a ray of light fell the sword 
between the creature's shoulders up to the hilt ; 
staggering, falling on one knee, with blind and 
dying eyes still haunted by unhallowed fires, 
gasping, faint, bleeding, more and more uncertain 
in step as he moved, transfixed with the deadly 
blade, whose hilt bore the sacred sign of the 
cross, blood issuing from mouth and nostrils, 
staggering, fainting, falling, dead ! 

A wild uproar ensues as the huge corpse rolls 
over in the dust ; the band breaks out into de- 
licious strains of music ; everybody springs to his 
feet, laughs, talks, congratulates, lights a ciga- 



70 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

rette, eats, flirts ; opera-glasses without numbet 
are turned upon the victorious maestro; cigars, 
hats, cigarettes are rained down on him, which 
he acknowledges, returning the hats to the en- 
thusiastic owners, bowing and saluting, not a 
fleck on his unsullied silk, proud of step and 
bold of eye as he looks up around the great am- 
phitheatre like a minute speck standing in the 
crown of an immense hat turned upward ; then 
out of the vo77iitorium dashes a span of four beau- 
tiful grays with waving plumes, gilded hoofs, and 
crimson, gold, and blue caparisons, dashing round 
the arena with their drivers after them, till they 
reach the stricken bull ; a rope is attached to his 
horns and he is ignominiously dragged out, again 
to triumphant music; the dead horses have the 
rope put around their necks ; the wounded ones 
are sent to the infermeria to be put in the hands 
of the veterinary surgeon, who treats them, sews 
them up, and trots them in again, again to be 
savagely torn, and killed; then the sharp snarl 
of shrieking trumpet, universal quiet ; the toril is 
opened, and out leaps apparently the self-same 
splendid tan-colored fellow as before. Slaughter- 
ing of horses ; fluttering of cloaks and banderil- 
las ; flinging and fixing of flinty darts; leaping 
of the valla by the bull, and general flight of 
those standing there, all escaping ; cries of Arre! 
corre I madre-deii I caballos I caballos I (On! run! 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 7 1 

mother of God ! horses ! horses ! ) ; oaths, execra- 
tion's, shouts from the audience, inconceivable 
jeers and hissing when the alcalde makes a mis- 
take and orders the espadas to their work a little 
before the time ; blood flight, tumult, hideous 
disemboweling, falling over of picadores, who are 
lifted up hastily, with their ribs stove in, by the at- 
tendants, and their dead or dying horses stripped 
of saddles and bridles, — victorious music, after 
the sword had sent its silver subtle flash deep into 
the vitals of the bull ; wild trample of inrush- 
ing horses and lifeless thud of dead ones being 
dragged out, — eating, drinking, fanning, coquet- 
ting, lemonade-bibbing, laughter, and delight, — 
such is an epitome of this national sport. Add for 
details that eight bulls and fourteen horses were 
killed ; that the bulls were all blooded, and had 
each his special name (Saltador, Pimiento, Pie 
de lievre, Azafrancro, Currito, Escribano, Fusi- 
lero. Carbon) ; that baskets of dirt were shoveled 
up and thrown over the tresh blood spilt from 
time to time ; that the espadas received hundreds 
of cigars ; that the bulls jumped the valla four 
times, and twice got hung and fell back, while 
the corridor was full of people ; that here and 
there people might be seen with antique skins of 
wine picnicking in the blood-warm, brimming 
air; that the bulls and the people grew wilder 
and fiercer as the evening advanced, until the 



72 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

day culminated in the ferocious onslaughts of an 
enormous black toro^ with all the difficulties, dan- 
gers, bloodshed, dexterity, and horror accompa- 
nying his final defeat and conquest ; then, with an 
almighty flare of trumpets the bull-fight was over ! 
' Vivan los toros ! ' And all this in bright, battle- 
mented, social, charming Valencia ! One can 
well understand the etymology which attributed 
the name Valencia to Baal, the god of fire. It is 
a country of intense shade and light. 



V. 

I think of thee, — my thoughts do twine and bud 

About thee, as wild vines about a tree 

Put out broad leaves, and soon there 's naught to see 

Except the straggling green which hides the wood. 

Yet, O my palm-tree ! be it understood 

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee ! 

Sonnets.from the Portuguese. 

What a skip from the city of bull-fights to the 
city of sherry — from blood to wine ! ^ All pleas- 
ant things must have an end ; so Valencia, the 
city where the Cid died, the city of palms and 
cypresses, of fairs and regattas, of romantic mid- 
night interviews from the balconies between se- 
iioritas and their waiting lovers, of oleander, 
acacia, and thatched huts, of great, island-like 
churches rising out of a white sea of low, sur- 
rounding houses, all patio' d and tiled, of the five 
graceful bridges with their quaint legendary fig- 
ures under canopies and pious inscriptions, which 
span the Turia, — now utterly dry, a spacious 
parapeted avenue where herds of bulls graze in 
the great golden sunlight, and lavanderas wash 
clothes where pools of clotted water have been 
left behind by the vanished river to rot in the 
sun, — all this, I say, had to be left behind. 

1 This chapter was written in Xeres. 



74 SPAIN IN PROFILE 

Valencia, with its beautiful port and blue water 
and busy ships lying in it and on it, bewitched 
by the warm Spanish yellow haze ; its huge, 
homely cathedral, where excommunication ma- 
jor is pronounced upon whosoever walks about 
during service ; its trim botanic garden, its stat- 
uesque beggars affixed to street corners and 
church-doors like advertisements of famine in a 
land of milk and — blood ; hooded, ragged, im- 
pudent, delightful creatures, incarnations of pet- 
rified and perambulating disease, picturesque in 
its very ugliness, — well ! Valencia had to be left, 
and with it the hotel full of bull-fighters. Ah 
me ! 

Again the railroad floats out as it were on a 
lake of rice-fields, speeds through the orange for- 
ests of Carcagente, and seems unable to unwind 
itself from the oasis-like huerta. It was even- 
ing : green and purple sierras loomed in embat- 
tled masses on the distance ; the weltering light 
of midday had melted into an exquisite sheen ; 
everything, sunflower-like, turned to bathe itself 
in this clear radiance, and crags and towers 
caught it, like a rich antiphonal song, till all the 
south became an illumined poem. This was 
Spain indeed, — such as one reads it in the soft 
dream of Irving's pages, in the volumes of Fer- 
nan Caballero, in the poems of Becquer, in the 
paintings of Murillo. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 75 

This is all of such Spain that one gets — from 
Gerona and Barcelona to the leagues beyond 
Valencia ; the rest, except in the neighborhood 
of towns and cities, is a Siberia in winter and a 
Sahara in summer. Late at night we arrived at 
Alicante, a small, dull Mediterranean town, lying 
oif the general route, but interesting from its prox- 
imity to one of the lions of Spain — Elche, the 
city of palms. Absolute aridity seems to have 
enveloped this blazing spot — the sun has leapt 
like a tiger on everything and burnt it up ; glare 
is the one word that expresses its shadeless soli- 
tudes and desolations. Alicante is a beggar by 
its rich sea — and an unwashed one, too. The 
sole tolerable moment in its eternal tedium is 
the stroll in the evening along the alameda, which 
faces the harbor and is planted with date-palms. 
Women in long, floating summer dresses sweep 
up and down the plaza in search of they know 
not what — eternal confession, perhaps, of incon- 
ceivable sin ; the ^^ov^ calesas drive to and from 
the station in a cloud of fire and dust, like Span- 
ish Elijahs ; even the sea refuses to lap the land 
and stands off, a sheet of mirror-like, motion- 
less blue flame. The market-place, with its low, 
white-washed arches, mosaic smells, and chaffer- 
ing Israelites, is the single region which the sun 
has not paralyzed and turned into a dormitory 
for this somnolent and long-suffering people. In 



j6 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

the hotel and out of it is alike a weariness. Only 
when night has quenched the glare can one's 
brain creep into anything like clearness about 
the place, its ancient history, the splendid crag 
beside it, the dispute of the antiquaries about the 
origin of its name, the life and the loveliness of 
its middle ages, may remember even the two or 
three ships that run in here annually by chance, 
and then come, as it seems, to everlasting anchor 
in the glassy water. Its inhabitants are dead souls 
doomed to a purgatory of calcined air, living light, 
and bitumen pavements. Could one harness the 
innumerable flies to draw the ca leches and cur- 
tains, row the boats, fan away the great spots of 
stagnant air, and keep the lids of one's eyes open, 
the life might be tolerable. ' There is refreshing 
shade under the palms at Elche,' sounded sweet to 
tired ears. Who could help thinking of Heine's 
lovely poem, ^Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam,'or 
of Bayard Taylor's *Arab to the Palm'? 

At four in the morning, while the moon was 
still bright, the caleche called at the Hotel de 
Bossio, and we * pilgrimaged,' as an old English 
version has it, toward the peace and the shadows 
of the palms. A singular sight ; miles on miles 
of plumy, airy, arabesque-like palms, with their 
sudden fountain-like foliation at the end, their 
bunches of rich-colored dates contrasting fantas- 
tically with the trunk and leaves, the imbricated 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 'JJ 

trunks themselves like closed pine-cones, stand- 
ing thick together as the pillars of a cloister, over- 
hanging turreted Moorish houses without blinds, 
and with ancient wells and water-wheels ; groups 
of long-eared asses whisking their tireless tails ; 
and visions and recesses of self-withdrawn and 
overarching shadow ! What an Eastern picture ! 
There was an Eastern salutation in everything ; 
the very houses said Salaam, — peace. A high 
bridge crossed the river, then palms. The old 
cathedral, with its summer swallows and its gilded 
shrines and its kneeling women and ministering 
acolytes, seemed, in its groined ceiling, its marble 
pillarets, and its shooting lines of delicate tracery, 
to be but a continuation of what you saw out- 
side in the groves of palms. See the picture : a 
low house — one of the lowest — and thick wall ; 
behind, and springing up with joyous unexpected- 
ness, a group of regal palms waving to heaven in 
sunny strength and power. Then a court-yard 
and fountain overshadowed by palms. Then 
plantations of palms, near and distant, where 
straight trunks and scimetar-like trunks, trunks 
perpendicular and trunks bending in every con- 
ceivable, delightful curve, till the thing became 
an imaginative panorama, full of plumes and toss- 
ing things, laced and interlaced into an intricate 
horizon of lovely shapes and forms. Palms by 
the river, palms in the plain, palms afar, palms 



78 SPAIN- IN PROFILE. 

near, palms male, with the leaves tied up to be 
blanched for Palm Sunday, and palms female, in 
all the glory of full expansion and fruit ; palms 
in trenches where the water can percolate the 
sandy soil and refresh their roots ; palms inter- 
spersed with, purple-clustered grapes, with im- 
mense aloes and Indian fig ; it is as if one had 
gone to sleep and awakened at Damascus. How 
all these lovely forms floated on the air and filled 
the heart with longing for the verses of Saadi ! 
The air seemed full of the pinnacles of a Berber 
palace. Two palms on opposite sides of the road 
bend over and form an exquisite arch; three 
stand together and make an oriel window ; in a 
sunny spot they herd together voluptuously and 
form the flying buttresses of a cathedral. Yonder 
is a Gothic vault ornamented with the graceful 
rosettes and foliage-wheels of the ends of the 
palms grouped together; here are a dome and 
pinioned arches ; there a baldachino, yonder a 
crypt, then a heaven-y-pointing campanile in the 
shape of a transcendent lady-palm straining up- 
ward. We see the elements of the Gothic archi- 
tecture, and its lost secret is found again. Here 
they are in solution, loosed from the stained 
windows and incense and priests, dancing in the 
air with elfish grace ; isolated pillars, bearded 
towers, filigree spires, antic gargoyles, and all ; 
Seville Cathedral dissolved by some 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 79 

wand and celebrating its Walpurgis night in the 
groves of Elche. 

All this is very singular, and the effect is 
heightened by the desert through which you pass 
to reach it, the ^\hy posada where you are obliged 
to put up, the astonishment of the native popula- 
tion to see 2iforastero in this out-of-the-way place, 
and the entire absence of all life about the place 
itself. It is a slice of Syria ; the very dogs bark 
Arabic ; the town-pump calls down the blessing 
of Allah, and the muezzin will call to prayer in 
due time, saying this : ' The Empire is God's, all 
is His/ As usual, flies and beggars, the only act- 
ive members of society, — ^ por el amor de Dios, 
por el a77ior de Dios,'' — at ' every step. The 
phrase has given rise to a curious Spanish word : 
pordiosero^ a man that says ^ Por Dios^ (for God's 
sake). An ass, with his brace of water-jugs steps 
gravely by on his errand of furnishing water to 
people too lazy to get it for themselves ; a little 
bread and meat and fruit in the market-place 
furnishes sustenance to the drowsy blood of the 
place ; a few old, worm-eaten cobblers sit in the 
cool doorways and mend alpargatas ; when there 
is a shirt or a sacque, it is as open in front as 
Dr. Johnson's or Lady Mary's ; the same Iberian 
type universally, with the intense eyes and hair, 
orange complexion, and slender grace, adding for 
this special place a slouchy, indescribable gait and 



8o SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 

languor born of the air and the East. Such is a 
pen-reproduction of Elche. To have a perfect 
idea, however, of its air, its palms, its helix-like 
streets, its slumber-smitten houses and priests, 
its Andalusian sombreros and portentous donkey 
ears, its scarlet paint of pomegranates a-blow, the 
stone seats and fountains of its alameda, with the 
maroon plains flooding about the town, and Ali- 
cante gasping in the distance, — it is necessary to 
have been there, to have seen and felt all this. 
In the common run of Spanish towns Elche is 
unique. It is off the sea and the railroad, in a 
situation of its own, and the traveler will have to 
seek it if he desires to get there, having first un- 
dergone a course of very early rising and (for 
Spain) very unusual fleecing. The visit can be 
made from Alicante in six hours. 

From Alicante a long and fatiguing journey 
brought the train to Cordova, changing at Al- 
cazar at three in the night. Even at that hour 
I found people drinking chocolate and eating 
sweet-cake at the station buffet — a habit not at 
all favorable to good health, but much indulged 
in by the Spaniards. The Arabs left behind a 
great number of words in Portuguese and Span- 
ish, signifying sweety sweets^ and the like, which 
both nations have amply utilized. The love of 
sweets is universal. Perhaps this accounts for 
the word Dentista written in gilt letters on so 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 8 1 

many Spanish houses. Beaumarchais, too, in his 
inimitable Figaro, touched a national chord, for 
every other shop is a barber-shop. To these add 
the sastreria^ or tailor-shops, and the estancos na- 
cionales^ cigar-shops monopolized by the govern- 
ment, and one important aspect of the Iberian 
streets may be kept in view, — the passion for 
clothes, tobacco, and gossip. 






VI. 

O Nineveh, was this thy God, 
Thine also, mighty Nineveh ? 

D. ROSSETTI. 

We are just leaving for Malaga and the great 
bay of Gibraltar is a scene of singular magnifi- 
cence. The rock resembles, when seen from 
the Cadiz side, a titan's slipper, — toe, instep, 
heel, and all, and is all the more striking from 
its almost vertical lift out of the water, with, no 
apparent connection with the adjacent continent, 
to which, however, it is joined by a low and long 
swan's-neck of land. There is such a wealth of 
tropical color about Gibraltar that it is a joy to 
see — superb blues, silvers, browns, and great 
spots of iridescent water, within which lie the 
ships, — ' a painted ship upon the painted ocean.' 
Across to the southwest loom in blue and silver 
the great masses of the Atlas Mountains, cloud- 
capt. In every direction lie thin-lined mountain 
forms, — skeletons clothed in light which at this 
early hour is extremely pure and luminous. Gib- 
raltar is a little world in itself, intensely prosaic, 
intensely poetical. East and West, North and 




SPAIN IN PROFILE, 83 

South, jostle each other there in every variety of 
costume, language, and custom. The streets and 
their promenaders are en masque^ — a crowd of 
every-day carnival people who have forgotten to 
lay off their masks and are bartering, chaffering, 
banking, attitudinizing in their carnival dresses. 
An element of intense commonplace is seen in 
the characteristic English names seen everywhere, 
— Waterport Street, Tukey's Lane, King's Bas- 
tion, Prince Albert's Front, Cathedral Street. 
Add to this the wooden figures which the names 
call up, — the pompous flunkey, the stiff English 
girl with ' Soho Square ' written all over her, the 
broad-shod and broad-cast cockney flinging arms 
and legs affably in the wind, the h'odds and 
h'ends of Downing Street and Spitalfields with 
visages reminiscent of beer and * 'alf-and-'alf ; ' 
the English hotels with all the horrors of do- 
mesticity,' commercial rooms, * home comforts,' 
bottled stout, and obsequious * boots,' — put all 
this commonplace amid the most enchanting sur- 
roundings, picturesque to the point of the incom- 
parable, and a tolerable vision of Gibraltar may 
be called up. As we steam around the rock it 
changes shape, and all the lines of confluent 
mountains adjust their angles to it. Far in the 
distance to the east the Sierra Nevada rises, with 
all Andalusia nestled about it, where mountain- 
ous Spain outdoes herself, and, as if conscious 



84 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

that here she must cease, rises to giddy heights 
and dazzling precipices overlooking the sea. 
Light, the fertilizing principle of everything, has 
not accomplished its mission here, certainly. 
These mountains, with all their beauty, are bare ; 
they would require to be re-forested before the 
rain will fall abundantly and Spain become that 
Hispania Felix which she seems to have been in 
ancient times. The Spaniards, like the negro 
races, have a most inexplicable repugnance to 
trees. When one looks over this yellow, desert, 
luminous country, and reflects on the possibilities 
which its soil and people contain, hopelessly un- 
developed, the reflection is not agreeable. As 
soon as a stream or a fountain is unlocked, there 
blossoms perennial verdure. All that is needed 
is water, that life-giving essence known in all its 
fruitfulness to the Arabs of blessed memory and 
applied by them to the conversion of Spain into 
a paradise during their seven hundred years' oc- 
cupation. The Vega of Granada and the Huerta 
of Valencia have remained to this day inexhaust- 
ible monuments of Moorish culture and fore- 
sight. They have the sun, the perpetual summer, 
the balmy climate and atmosphere, and a vast 
system of water-sheds ; but water ! water ! We 
know, for example, how our alkali West efflo- 
resces as it were at the magic touch of water. 
At Cordova a great river (the Guadalquivir) flows 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 85 

by at their feet and yet the surrounding lands 
have a steppe-like sterility. At Seville the same 
river has made a delightful pleasure-ground of 
fields and orchards. The languid Spaniard waits 
for the ripe fruit to drop into his mouth, and if it 
does not, * charity, that holy child of God,' as he 
poetically calls it, extends an untiring hand and 
importunes the much-enduring neighbor. 

At Gibraltar (occupied since 1704 by the Brit- 
ish) English rule has introduced much that is 
commendable. Other things strike an independ- 
ent observer as mean and petty. English prices 
and English extortion prevail ; everything is a 
* shilling ' where before and elsewhere in Spain 
it was half a peseta. There is sharp practice in 
pounds and cheating in pennies. Fees are ex- 
pected and demanded. English is the language 
of the place. Wine, that child of Spain and the 
sun, elsewhere so lavishly given and so little 
thought of in the bill, — being in fact the invari- 
able accompaniment of every dinner and break- 
fast, however humble, — is here withheld and sub- 
jected to a hotel tariff. It is doled out in half 
glasses, as it would be over a London counter, 
and thrust into the account as if to remind the 
visitor that ^ England expects every man to do 
his duty ' — by paying a wine-tax. The shops are 
abominable : Moorish wares (made in Manches- 
ter) ; Turkish cutlery (from Sheffield) ; photo- 



86 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

graphs of African and Mediterranean scenery 
* taken on the spot ' (Oxford Street), abound in 
these haunts of Morocco Jews and cross-legged 
Berbers. Never go into a shop and dream of 
giving the price first demanded. You will by so 
doing simply subject yourself to the wonder and 
contempt of the shopman. Give one half or one 
third of what he asks, and he will be satisfied. 
If a shilling is asked, give dos reales (two reals). 
Pay no attention to exclamations and attitudes. 
The whole thing — buying and selling — is a 
tableau of the Orient which must be looked on 
calmly, weighed, and considered with due refer- 
ence to the hyperbole of the East. In Gibraltar 
shopping does not, as at Constantinople, posi- 
tively amount to proffering of coffee, benignant 
salutations, and a sitting down to discuss prices 
for half a day or half an afternoon ; but the in- 
fluence of the adjacent Africa is felt, and de- 
mands must be quartered or halved just in pro- 
portion to their unreasonableness. A good rule 
of three for a Gibraltar shop would be, take the 
sum demanded, divide by four, and the quotient 
will give the amount expected (and gratefully ac- 
cepted) by the dueho or lord of the counter. 

Chaos reigns among the coins, too, at Gibral- 
tar ; the place is a centre for counterfeit money, 
clipped valuations, and depreciated currency. 
Spanish money, in contact with Old England, is 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 8/ 

undervalued, loses its intrinsic value (^ which is 
greater than the French), and is made to redound 
to the benefit of the Gibraltese in every transac- 
tion. Spanish centimos, escudos, and dollars cir- 
culate side by side with Victoria pennies, half- 
crowns, and sovereigns. The steamers come to 
anchor out in the harbor and are met on their 
arrival by the usual fleet of welcoming boatmen, 
with whom, as in the ^gean, a bargain must abso- 
lutely be made or the passenger will be the worse 
for it. It is not pleasant dancing about on this 
beautifully green water half an afternoon trying 
to come to terms with a refractory boatman. A 
friend gave me an experience of two gentlemen 
who had engaged a boat for the neighborhood at 
two dollars, but the current, which flows through 
the straits at the rate of two and a half miles an 
hour, carried them over to Tangier. Night was 
approaching ; they were nearing a strange coast, 
and landing was necessary; but the two boat- 
men refused to land the passengers unless they 
paid five dollars, at the same time emphasizing 
the demand by drawing their knives. The gen- 
tlemen therefore both drew revolvers, which they 
fortunately had with them, and told the fellows 
with equal emphasis that they should take the 

two dollars and land them, or a convenient 

blank was left here to intimate certain possibili- 
ties to the oriental imagination which it had not 



88 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

taken into account. This anecdote is related as 
by no means typical, but as an extreme example 
of what may happen in Mediterranean Europe, 
from Syria to the gates of Hercules, provided due 
caution is not exercised by travelers. 

The fortifications of Gibraltar are something 
stupendous and well worth seeing. The six miles 
of circumference which the rock embraces are a 
net-work of tunnels, galleries, mines, powder-mag- 
azines, shell-rooms, concealed communications, 
and military works of every sort. Ten years ago 
England had already spent $250,000,000 on the 
defenses, which have been greatly elaborated 
and strengthened since. The soldier who accom- 
panied me through the galleries said there were 
at present six hundred mounted guns, among 
them (though not yet all mounted) three eighty- 
one-tonners. One sees in every direction heaps 
of shot and shell, pyramids of case-shot and 
cannon balls rusty with age or just piled up with 
mathematical precision and all the pomp and cir- 
cumstance of expected war, in perfect order and 
readiness. The donkey-ride to the galleries and 
signal station is (leaving the donkey out) charm- 
ing. The road, which is macadamized up to a 
certain point, gradually ascends to the guard- 
station, where the pass to see the galleries, pre- 
viously obtained by application to the colonel 
commanding, is demanded. A red-coat then 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 89 

takes you in charge and you enter one long tun- 
nel after another, cut through the limestone rock 
and mile-stoned at every few paces by enormous 
cannon, which look out through embrasures on 
a landscape of exquisite loveliness. Here and 
there open terraces have been arranged, where 
the visitor descends from his donkey and enjoys 
the unparalleled panorama at his feet, — Span- 
ish Sierras, lofty peaks of Morocco, the Atlan- 
tic ocean and the Mediterranean, Andalusia, the 
kingdoms of Fez, Mezquinez, and Morocco, the 
town of Gibraltar beneath, with the bay alive 
with boats, steam-launches, lighters, and ships of 
every nation, the low peninsula, with the * neutral 
ground,' the Jewish and garrison cemeteries, the 
* Spanish lines,' with far-vanishing curves and 
sweeps of jagged and serrated mountains ; Alge- 
ciras, with its pretty women ; San Roque, with its 
cork-forest and bull-ring ; Tarifa and its Moorish 
towers ; Malaga, among its muscatelles and pine- 
apples, and Trafalgar, with its light-house and 
glorious memories, all near. St. George's Hall 
is the name of a beautiful Gothic cavern ex- 
cavated from the rock, with outlooks in two 
directions, and connected with other works by 
long and dimly lighted corridors. Picnics take 
place here among the cannon ; and through the 
windows, out of which peep formidable Arm- 
strongs, there is another series of unrivaled 



90 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

views. Sea-gulls float below on the sea like 
winged lamb-fleece ; one catches sight of unro- 
mantic buzzards floating over the Jewish ceme- 
. tery, in which the men are buried on one side 
and the women on the other; steamers creep 
into view out of the illuminated haze on the 
water, and the lovely coast with all its lace-like 
points and indentations throws its serene out- 
lines effulgently into relief. From the galler- 
ies, before passing which one comes to the an- 
cient Arab castle on the hill-side, admission to 
which is no longer granted, the journey continues 
up the rock to the signal-station, one thousand 
four hundred and fifty feet above the sea. If the 
views from the bull's-eye of St. George's Hall 
were fine, those from the signal-station were still 
more so. The air, after the sultry heat of Gibral- 
tar below, was delicious. The station is a small 
platform, with a tower, bastions, and parapet, 
from which the encircling seas and continents as 
they melt into each other, like the colors of an 
enamel, can be studied as on a map. The re- 
freshments, licorously described by the guide- 
books, consisted of a visitor's book, a dirty table 
and two or three chairs, a few bottles of Bass's 
ale, and John Bull in the person of a stalwart 
private. The officers we saw were amusing them- 
selves turning their telescopes on the outgoing or 
incoming steamers. The descent is in another 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 9 1 

direction, towards Europa Point, which is at the 
west end of the rock — another mass of bristling 
and embattled fortifications, as indeed the whole 
side where the town of Gibraltar lies is. This 
west-north side is the only weak side, the south 
and east sides being by nature nearly, and by art 
absolutely, inaccessible. The result is that engi- 
neering skill and military science have exhausted 
themselves in strengthening the weakness of nat- 
ure and making this side impregnable. Huge 
cannon look out through masses of cactus, pal- 
metto, geranium, and pine-apple. Stone-pines 
lift their emerald umbrellas here and there, af- 
ording a frame for the tropical pictures below. 
Monkeys chatter among the dwarf palm on this 
end of the rock, — * the primitive inhabitants of 
Gibraltar, respected alike by the Spaniards and 
English.' Teeming vegetation is descried be- 
tween garden walls, where immense figs, peaches, 
and grapes and airy almond-trees scatter scents 
and sweets ; the coloring everywhere is more pure 
and passionate than unkindled northern eyes are 
acquainted with, and amid it all the great forms 
of silent Sierras watching by the sea, sphinxes of 
eternal expectation, forms poetized by this per- 
petual air, not nocturnes nor arrangements, but 
irradiated harmonies whose key-note is transpar- 
ence, fantastic grace, and weird stillness. 



VII. 

Pale in the green sky were the stars, I ween, 
Because the moon shone Hke a tear she shed 
When she dwelt up in heaven a while ago, 
And ruled all things but God. 

Morris. 

Je propose des fantasies informes et irresolues, comme font ceulx 
qui publient des questions doubteuses a desbattre. — Montaigne. 

One's first impressions of Granada are cer- 
tainly delightful. The train from the south ar- 
rives in the night, so one goes to bed full of the 
dreams and expectations of the morning, which 
are more than realized. Already the cooling air, 
as the train winds up the long valley from Malaga 
and the sea, announces the presence of the snow- 
tipt Sierras — a gradual ascent out of glowing 
tropical air, all a-tremble with heat and perfume, 
into the continual spring of this favored haunt of 
the Khalifs. Bare, absolutely bare, are the mount- 
ains, gorges, and ravines through which we pass 
after leaving the fruitful huerta of Malaga, with 
its edging of sunlit sea, its interminable vines 
and oranges, and the bright vision of tinted and 
tawny mountains which frame it in on three sides. 
Two or three whitewashed Andalusian towns are 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 93 

descried amid groves of citron, fig, and olive ; 
two or three stations are passed, where herds of 
donkeys stand loading or loaded ; a lazy diligence 
or two awaits a sleepy passenger, and Malagueno 
peasants in wide sombreros sell melons, or look 
over the fences wistfully at the train, some with 
fowling-piece and dog, some with fishing-rod and 
basket. Nothing is in any special hurry except 
the fussy little train, which, once started, makes 
haste to be as slow and exasperating as possible. 
The engineering work on this road is of con- 
siderable importance and difficulty, and there are 
many bridges, trestles, and tunnels. At Boba- 
dilla trains meet and passengers change, some 
for Cordova, some for Malaga, and some for Gra- 
nada. As we meandered on up the Sierras (Gra- 
nada is nearly twenty-five hundred feet above the 
sea), the mountains became infinitely purple and 
rich-tinted, aided by the silvery effluence of the 
half moon which — the glorious symbol of Islam 
— hung over the gray-and-crimson altitudes as 
their eloquent exponent. The roseate and orange 
tints gradually melted into indistinguishable um- 
ber till the last steel-gray of the moonlit Sierra 
became immerged in amber-enameled night. De- 
lightful freshness filled the air ; the presence of 
glaciers, snows, and icy torrents is felt all through 
the languid frame relaxed by the oven-like heat 
of the plains. The train stops, and a calesa re- 



94 SPAIN IN PROFIIE, 

ceives and deposits you at one of the three or 
four hotels in this city of seventy-eight thousand 
inhabitants, the capital, bishop's see, and cathe- 
dral city of one of the eight provinces into which 
Andalusia is divided. I selected the Washington 
Irving Hotel, not only on account of its associa- 
tions with the charming historian, but on account 
of its being in the Alhambra grounds, on one of 
the four hills on which Granada is built, and com- 
manding glimpses, through tall elms and over 
flowering terraces,' of the Vega; and I have' not 
regretted the choice. The city lies below, half a 
mile off, blazing with heat, sunshine, whitewash, 
and dust, while we are enveloped in magnificent 
elm-walks, delicious shadow, moisture, sweetness, 
and verdure. The spirits of the lost sultanas 
return every spring in the song of the nightin- 
gales that throng these woods ; Moorish music is 
heard in the tinkling and ear-titillating melody of 
rivulets, unlocked from the abundant Sierras ; 
long arcades of overarching trees radiate from 
the hotels to the Alhambra and the town ; ex- 
pressive quiet reigns everywhere about this fa- 
mous domain, and through the night glitter of 
hastening water may be seen in the moon. Alto- 
gether, it is the most charming place I have 
visited in Spain. 

It is almost impossible to write of Granada 
satisfactorily on the spot. The strange and ten- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 95 

der air, the richness of the plain, the monumen- 
tal masses of the Sierra Nevada rising eleven 
thousand feet above it, and the mingled histories 
and poesies of the place, all put description at 
a disadvantge, and render an effort to reproduce 
them almost impertinent. The white, gray, and 
yellow masses of the town would be uninteresting 
enough were it not for the transcendent scenes 
enacted among them, — the gorgeous Khalifate, 
the tournaments, sieges, battles, and assassina- 
tions ; the ivory and mother-of-pearl loving Moor 
rearing his fabrics beside the ponderous arches 
of Rome, to be succeeded by the cathedral-loving 
Spaniard with his domes and pinnacles, imagery, 
and civic splendor. The place is an architect- 
ural palimpsest. One life and civilization lies 
upon another. The keen blade of the antiquary 
is necessary to run in between, pierce, penetrate, 
and separate these lives, and bring forth the 
elements to clearness and intelligibility. Much 
of the glory of 1492 has departed. How much 
hatred, prejudice, and ignorance are buried in the 
leaden sarcophaguses of Ferdinand and Isabella ! 
Splendid cenotaphs are raised above them, to 
commemorate their mighty triumph in the con- 
quest of Granada, the expulsion of Moors and 
Jews, the beginning of the cathedral in whose 
Capilla Real they lie, and the work of grace 
accomplished in the capture of the puissant city. 



96 SPAIN TN PROFILE. 

Their wooden, marble, and painted images smirk 
from every corner ; their coats of arms are em- 
blazoned on every side ; the arrows of Aragon 
everywhere mingle with the yoke of Castile ; 
scutcheons, bas-reliefs, reliquaries, canvases, cele- 
brate and perpetuate the most Catholic sover- 
eigns. A sudden loathing at their work seizes 
one, and an immense desire to escape the eternal 
F. and Y. intertwined. Even the beggars that 
crouch around the archbishop's palace become 
more tolerable as they wait the daily alms, and 
stretch themselves in attitudes of monumental 
indolence about the pavement. Charles V. and 
Philip II. at Madrid, San Ferdinand and Don 
Pedro at Seville, and Ferdinand and Isabella at 
Granada ; such are the continual torment of the 
unhappy tourist, who is forced to see, hear, taste, 
and smell them at every step, from the jabbering 
of cicerones to the drivel of guide-books. 

One advantage of a residence on the Alham- 
bra Hill is that it is too quiet for the beggars ; 
only five or six buzz among the elms and molest 
the dreaming and meditating promenader, — one 
blind beggar who can see, and three or four see- 
ing beggars who are blind. Two or three Amer- 
icans, an Austrian, a few English, and one or two 
Spaniards, constitute the summer boarders at 
this, of all the places in Spain the most fascinat- 
ing. Whoever cares for tranquillity, umbrageous 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 97 

walks, a serene and tender sky, perfect associa- 
tions, and the ever-brooding spirit of gentle and 
heroic memories, will come to Granada and walk 
in its shady alamedas, among the oleander and 
jasmine of the two rivers, in and out of the old 
Moorish streets, and along the twilight avenues 
of this haunted hill. Never mind the cooking, 
the greasy comidas and ill-attended almuerzos^ — 
never mind the fleas and * domestiques ' of the 
night, the lack of concerts, cock-fights (!) and the- 
atres, the drowsy shops, whinnying asses, and 
washer-women chatting at the fountains ! there is 
a fund of quiet enjoyment in the dilapidated old 
place, and one will go away laden with precious 
souvenirs, — ' in the name of God, the merciful 
and compassionate.' * Perpetual Salvation ' was 
written by the poetic Moor all over the walls of 
his Andalusian palaces ; * There is no conqueror 
but God,' is the continual cry of the traceries of 
the Alhambra. Grace and praise are continually 
ascribed by him to the creator of this wonderful 
region where a Damascus of lace and fretwork 
and stalactite carving was enchanted by dex- 
terous chisels out of the womb of the Sierras. 
There is no lack of attraction of many sorts 
about the place. There are charming excursions 
in the neighborhood to Alhama, Lanjaron, and 
Santa Fe, the city built by Isabella during the 
siege. Alpine climbers have magnificent sport in 



98 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the peaks and gorges that rise on all sides. The 
forests abound in sweet-scented medicinal herbs. 
Fifteen hours bring one to Cordova, eight to 
Malaga, and twenty-three to Madrid. The hotels 
are quite tolerable in comfort and price; living 
is cheap, and one can fancy few lives more en- 
durable than such a summer passed among such 
surroundings. The elms planted by the Duke 
of Wellington — whose estate, presented by the 
Spanish government, lies near here — are sin- 
gularly slender, tall, and thick, festooned with 
ivy, and forming verdurous glooms and obscuri- 
ties through which the sun hardly breaks. The 
poetic tenants of the opposite hotel played the 
guitar delightfully last night ; and as one glanced 
upward through the long reed-like poplars and 
elms, the most brilliantly pure moonlit sky be- 
came visible, and the mellow masses of the abut- 
ting walls of the Alhambra looked weird and re- 
mote. The Hotel Washington Irving fronts the 
road which leads up to the Generalife and its 
fairy gardens, belonging to the Pallavicini family, 
and famous for its cypresses, rushing fountains, 
tower, and view. The back of the hotel, which 
is for three or four stories one vast mirador 
framed in glass, looks down on terraces and 
fountains, and orange-trees full of golden fruit 
of last year's growth. The air possesses a pierc- 
ing freshness unknown elsewhere in summer, so 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 99 

that the upper story of the hotel, nearer the 
sun, is far the most agreeable. Last year's news- 
papers, some old music, a hideous book on anat- 
omy full of colored plates, a cracked piano, two 
or three ancient inlaid cabinets, and a wall hung 
with daubs, grace the sala de lectura^ where no- 
body can or does read. The long, Last-supper- 
like upper chamber, which serves as comedbr or 
dining-room, is almost devoid of guests, save the 
Austrian geologist, the American and English art- 
ists, and the English vice-consul. Nothing can 
exceed the beauty and fruitfulness and verdure 
of this spot. Yesterday evening an immense 
number of people came trooping from Granada 
to see the corpse of a poor majo who was mur- 
dered the day before. The long navaja — a huge 
knife, very fashionable among the lower classes 
of Spain — did the work. The reino of Granada 
is said to rank second on the list of provinces 
most fertile in homicide. The people are quick- 
tempered, passionate, and impulsive ; and scenes 
of bloodshed, sudden reconciliations, and un- 
expected outbursts of affection or hatred, quite 
characteristic. The fire in their eyes is like the 
fire in their wine, — evidence of the slumbering 
heat that may spring to the surface in an instant, 
and do deeds of unpardonable violence. If, as 
Alfieri said, the crimes of the Italian people were 
a proof of the superiority of the stock, what ex- 



lOO SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

cellences must be attributed to their Spanish 
brethren. 

While the crowd was trooping by, the Ameri- 
can artist amused himself pelting little Enrique, 
the beggar boy, with melon rind, peaches, bread, 
and cake, all of which he devoured greedily, 
whether falling in the water of the gutter or not. 
One is saluted quite regularly of a morning 
with ^ Buenos Dias, Sehorito^' or * Vaya usted con 
Dios^^ by the little flower-girl, who is the dragon 
of this Hesperides, and lies in ambuscade under 
the elms with unfailing punctuality. If you an- 
swer — as the Spaniards do — ^ Manafia ' (to- 
morrow), or ' Esta tarde^ (this evening), she will 
impatiently exclaim, * No^ ahora^ or, * Siempre 
manana ' (' No, now,^ or ' Always to-morrow '). As 
she has a poor little basket of flowers as her ex- 
cuse for begging, one can tolerate her importu- 
nities. That is so much better than the contin- 
ual * Te?igo hambre^^ or ''For Dios ' of the wretched 
professionals ! 

Brilliant masses of crape-myrtle, laurel, box, 
daphne, geranium, myrtle, plumbago, and fire- 
plant, illumine the summer darknesses of the 
Alhambra gardens and hang their blossoming 
flame over the ruined walls and towers. Bright- 
feathered martlets sport among the tops of the 
poplars, and the whole inclosure is a labyrinth 
of interwoven light-and-shadow arabesques. On 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. lOI 

the fagade of the hotel opposite is a tablet with 
this inscription : ' Fortuny habito en esta fonda 
desde el lo de Junio de 1870 al 30 de Octubre de 
1871/ Fortuny was a young Spanish painter of 
extraordinary genius whose Moorish and Oriental 
pictures with their dash, individuality, strange- 
ness, and superb coloring, were the talk of the 
artistic world of Paris for some years, and whose 
untimely death was a cruel loss. Hans Andersen 
lived in the same hotel. Of an evening — these 
infinitely soft, spiritual Spanish evenings of the 
Sierra Nevada ! — all the senores, senoras, and 
senoritas of this hotel come out and sit before 
the door, and nearly every evening they have 
music. There is a beautiful terrace full of arbors, 
urns, walks, and tables, where one sees the ladies 
sitting at their work in the shady forenoon, de- 
lightfully deshabilles like all Spanish ladies in 
the morning, and the pleasant murmur of the 
melodious Castilian comes over to our grilled and 
curtained balconies, which wall in the other side 
of the street. A great dry fountain lies in the 
way below, and before it chairs and benches and 
a little stand where a busy, dark-eyed Granadina 
dispenses all sorts of highly-colored refreshments 
out of cut-glass tumblers and decanters. Again 
and again one is enchanted with the eloquent 
peace and beauty of this spot, — the very don- 
keys laden with huge wicker-work hampers, the 



102 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

majos in their velvet jackets twirling the invari- 
able vara or cane, the comfortable two-horse car- 
riages awaiting customers, the blue and sunny- 
vistas up and down the avenues, the lazy song 
of the locust idealized by distance into a sweet 
suggestiveness of patient and evanescent exist- 
ence : all is so tranquil and so lovely. 

A walk down into the town brings you into a 
totally different set of feelings. The mental 
habit is completely changed. In Granada itself, 
tiles, dust, turreted houses, parapets full of flow- 
ers, old churches full of mellow and pleasing col- 
oring, full of famous ashes, images, and pictures, 
Arabic-looking streets and alleys where the houses 
nearly touch, and where tiny shops nestle in cud- 
dies and corners innumerable ; all is different. 
The principal street is the Zocatin, which looks 
more like a blind alley than anything else. Sin- 
gularly picturesque is the Albeiceria^ or quarter of 
the silk mercers, divided up into narrow passages 
crossing at right angles to each other, and full 
of marble pillars, horse-shoe arches, and dainty 
traceries in the Moorish style. It is a bit of an- 
tiquity which you come upon suddenly and find 
alive with antediluvian shops, fantastic figures, 
and Eastern sentiment. Then the old houses, 
with long, projecting, two or three storied wooden 
galleries in front, curiously carved and outland- 
ish, form a peculiar feature. My artist friend 
was delighted with an old Arabic house with 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. IO3 

three turrets, tiled roof, and arcaded windows 
which overhung a public square. 

Then we came by an ancient building in whose 
wide-arched doorway stood a group of crimson- 
trousered Spanish hussars, in deep Rembrandt- 
like shadow, while beyond them a fire glowed, 
throwing weird and fitful illumination on the walls 
and figures. Presently the street debouched on 
the Vega, where we found vast gardens inundated 
with water for purposes of irrigation, while sus- 
picious looking contrabandistas with their short 
guns with down-turned muzzles, coats slung over 
their shoulders, and oriental sash, sauntered lei- 
surely along in the gathering shade. We soon 
lost ourselves in the unknown streets, and finally 
took refuge in a cafe with resplendently frescoed 
ceiling, knots of Granadinos and Granadinas sip- 
ping horchateria and pufiing cigarettes, and an 
infinity of marble tables. On the return the art- 
ist was struck by an effect of blinding moonlight 
striking a wall up a deep shadowy lane, — so fan- 
tastically white that it seemed more like calcium 
light than the delicate splendor of this Spanish 
moon. Then a long walk up through the myste- 
riously illumined elms, by marble seats and fount- 
ains, through the aisled and nave-like shadow 
exquisitely broken in upon by a remote silvery 
sky. 

From the Alhambra terraces one looks down 
over the tree-tops upon the Vega, a most fertile 



I04 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

and highly cultivated plain, where the rivers 
Darro and Xenil flow down from the Sierras and 
form a wonderful oasis. It is a little kingdom 
in itself, and every stone of it speaks eloquent 
Arabic. It has been said that a journey in Spain 
is a continual funeral procession in the footsteps 
of the Moors. One comes on their splendid 
traces — their cities, mosques, arts, evidences — 
everywhere, and finds that whatever of best and 
noblest Spain possesses is due to them. So it is 
with this heir-loom of irrigation, by which they 
transformed so many deserts into orchards. The 
savage want of unirrigated Spain is the truest 
tribute to Moorish intelligence. You feel certain 
that the king of the fairy tale who remained a 
king only so long as he did not see water would 
run little risk in this kingdom. 

I have heard of five or six murders taking 
place in the short time I have been here. Sev- 
eral of them were from the most trivial causes. 
At Malaga and elsewhere the prevalence of an 
intensely exasperating wind called the levante is 
regarded by the judge as an extenuating circum- 
stance in many cases of crime, and criminals 
often escape by alleging its prevalence. Justice 
seems lax enough here, for I have not heard of 
any one of these being severely punished. It is 
forbidden to carry knives and — everybody car- 
ries them. Formidable-looking things they are, 
too. 



VIII.* 

El dorado techo 
Se admira fabricado 
Del sabio Moro, en jaspes sustentado. 

Fra Luis de Leon. 

The monuments of the Alhambra seem scat- 
tered in a certain disorder as if thrown there by 
chance, rising in picturesque confusion, extend- 
ing among spacious gardens, the most notable 
and splendid buildings for the kings alternating 
with the less elegant ones dedicated to the favor- 
ite women, the numerous sons, and the courtiers 
of the Khalifs. The Alhambra palace, in particu- 
lar, expresses the culminating point of seven ages 
of culture, and, what is most worthy of attention, 
the transition from the puritanism of the Koranic 
schools of the Orient to that ideality and freedom 
which characterized the Moorish Renaissance of 
the thirteenth century. Science, literature, the 
heroism of passion, the chivalric militarism that 
has struck such deep roots in Spain, political 
toleration, the respect shown the wise, the poetic, 

1 Many details of this chapter are taken from Contreras' 
unique monograph, Estudio Descriptivo de los Momimentos 
Arabes de Granada ^ Sevilla y Co7'doha. Madrid, 1878. 



I06 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

and the valiant, the predilection for art, and the 
love of popularity which plunged the Moorish 
magnates into splendid crimes of vanity or am- 
bition, — whatever, in short, can reveal the devel- 
opment of the civil power as the beginning of 
progress, — all is more or less clearly indicated 
within the walled inclosure of this half ruinous, 
half restored construction, on which the labors 
of four centuries have exhausted themselves in 
efforts to recover a lost splendor. This palace 
is not simply an enchanting system of capricious 
ornaments whose originality arrests us, but it re- 
veals the secret of the last two ages of Arabic 
domination, explaining by what artifice the ruin 
of the Saracen power could not be consummated 
in Spain immediately after the conquest of Se- 
ville, and why the victorious arms of the Spaniards 
quailed, if they did not absolutely surrender, be- 
fore the brilliant ascendency of the Granada dy- 
nasty. This dynasty, though confined within an 
insignificant region and besieged by the Christian 
forces, yet by its very grace, culture, and refine- 
ment dictated peace to its enemies and com- 
manded the admiration of the w^orld. Strange 
scenes and centuries — proclaiming the power of 
that people who cherished the very sons of the 
princes against whom they fought \ celebrating 
tourneys with them like gallant friends ; offering 
them their arts ; presenting them with the beau- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. lO/ 

teous products of their luxurious industries in 
silk and needle-work, and inviting the powerful 
captains who were besieging them to gorgeous 
hunting-parties, where, in cultured rivalry, their 
arms, vestments, and accomplishments shone em- 
ulously ! 

The Alhambra rose, like all the classic edifices 
of antiquity; at that culminating epoch from 
which begins inevitable descent and decadence ; 
an epoch of abounding talent, in which delight in 
architecture verges on extravagance. It might 
be called the descending apogee of civilization, 
which we must surprise as it were in the ver^' act 
in order to recognize its progress, without giv- 
ing way to the enchanting intoxication which it 
evokes or perverting our taste by too ardent a 
contemplation of its masterpieces. 

He who ascends through the study of the Moor- 
ish monuments of Cordova, Toledo, and Seville, 
finds an unsatisfied void in his mind and invol- 
untarily remembers Cairo, Tunis, and Fez, arriv- 
ing by successive deductions at the mosques of 
Constantinople, the tombs of Afghanistan, and 
the ancient pagodas of Delhi. These oriental 
monuments are all reflected in the Alhambra, — 
are the architectural annotations to this exquisite 
volume which the Moorish kings have opened for 
us under the radiant skies of the Sierras. And 
though at first sight its outlines seem scattered 



I08 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

among towers, walls, and gardens, the slightest 
investigation of the precious remains of the 
Alhambra will display symmetry and regularity. 
There is more than the conception of mere gaunt, 
right lines ; there is convergence of objects all re- 
ferred to the same point, whose plan and method, 
maintained with superstitious rigor, make us ad- 
mire what we were inclined to believe the chance 
product of the fantasy or the insomnia that pro- 
duces a fairy tale. 

During the mania for classicism which dom- 
inated Europe at the Renaissance, efforts were 
made to explain the Alhambra by an exclusive 
system deemed, even by the most brilliant disci- 
ples of the academies, synonymous with the just 
and beautiful. The Spanish artists, not being 
able to view with indifference a monument which 
awakened more curiosity than those of Seville, 
Toledo, and Cordova, sought with sudden toler- 
ance to respect what the emperor Charles V., by 
the advice of Italian artists, had left for the admi- 
ration of posterity ; interpreted its inharmonious 
appearance according to their classical educa- 
tion ; sought to fit their theories of beauty and 
suitability into the remains they encountered at 
every step, and by dint of looking through a 
prism manufactured for the exclusive use of the 
reasonings of the schools, persuaded themselves 
that they had found the key to the importance 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. IO9 

attributed, out of Spain, to these monuments. 
From that time the Alhambra ceased to be called 
a barbarous edifice ; the academy of San Fer- 
nando ordered a work illustrating its artistic 
treasures to be published ; the famous Jovellanos 
explained its beauties and its history ; and there- 
after writers of more or less note devoted them- 
selves to celebrating its glories. Why, when 
academies respected pagan antiquity alone, did 
they stop to admire this * semi-barbarous ' Alca- 
zar, relic of a domination which they would so 
gladly have wiped from their memories t 

Well, the Alhambra palace could be squared ! 
The lines which, according to the academy, had 
disappeared, could be restored ! The original 
plan could be found again ! A central axis was 
sought; courts and naves were traced arbitrarily 
to suit the preconceived system ; the same towers 
were imagined on both sides ; the same gates ; 
equal altitudes. Delightful uniformity, on a par 
with the heroics of Pope, the avenues of Ver- 
sailles, or the yardstick of a mercer's clerk ! 

It almost seems as if the genius of antiquity 
were uncomprehended in the decadence of the 
Renaissance. Is there not a strange conformity 
between these Moorish edifices and the houses 
of Pompeii and Herculaneum ? In the gipsy 
quarter of Granada, when we penetrate into the 
few houses that remain, is there not a distribu- 



I lO SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

tion closely akin to the Roman and Greek ? If 
we look to the arrangement for baths, we see not 
resemblance, but absolute equality. Oriental 
civilizations both ; both inspired in one and the 
same origin. What the Spanish academicians 
thought they discovered was not the special merit 
of the Alhambra ; it was the mistaken interpreta- 
tion of its character and symbol. 

Recent excavations demonstrate beyond the 
possibility of a doubt the misconceptions of the 
academy. * No parallelogram is possible,' says 
Contreras, ' whether from the configuration of 
the site or — a more certain proof — from the un- 
covered remains.' There are no lines of cement 
which would prove the truth of the imaginary 
parallelogram. The uniformity and symmetry 
demanded by the situation exist, it is true, but 
elsewhere than was imagined by these erudite 
speculators. 

In every Arabic ^ monument the entrance is by 
an advanced tower or between two towers, ex- 
cept in edifices serving for family purposes, when, 
as is still often seen in Andalusian houses, they 
are replaced by a small square ingress. A long 
narrow hall cuts the axis of the edifice perpen- 
dicularly, and from this point the distribution of 
the two wings departs. Where the two axes cross 
is usually found the entrance, giving birth to 

1 Contreras. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 1 1 

those fantastic perspectives so often observed in 
Oriental constructions. Then behind the door 
of ingress follows a court, ox patio ^ with a tank and 
fountains, light and graceful arcades at the two 
ends or sides (for these courts are square), and 
beyond the second gallery, following the same 
central axis, parallelogram-shaped naves succeed 
each other till the final one is reached, where the 
finest nave is found rising majestically above the 
edifice and mirroring its cupolas or minarets in 
the long undulous reflections of the waters of the 
tank. The other apartments of a house of this 
description were placed in little pavilions ranged 
along the sides of the courts ox patios as irregu- 
larly decorated as the booths of a Turkish en- 
campment. 

This plan — so closely resembling a long cross 
cut at various distances by perpendicular arms 
parallel to each other — is entirely classic ; the 
Spanish Arabs did not depart from it, and en- 
riched or simplified it according to the special 
exigency. Renaissance art of course brought in 
a flood of ornamentation, — grotesques, frontis- 
piece-like balconies, and other slight deviations ; 
but note, ever the same plan, the Moorish origin, 
a principle of enchanting, classic simplicity, that 
makes us to-day admire and envy, for it would 
be admissible, even now, if the spirit of Spanish 
society would permit of its introduction, slightly 
modified. 



112 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Such is the regularity of the Alhambra — not 
what the classicists of the last century, with their 
facades, angles, and quadrangles, believed. The 
ruins that remained, the rubbish so often disdain- 
fully abandoned by an age which deserves to be 
forgotten, lent themselves to the most absurd 
interpretations. The very cement used by the 
Arabs harmonized with this misinterpretation, 
and by its peculiar hardness and quartz-like for- 
mation so closely resembled the natural crystal- 
lization going on in this soil, that the two were 
often confounded, and imaginary lines of build- 
ings were discovered which precisely fitted in 
with the square and parallelogram theory. 

The approach to the Alhambra is by a tunnel- 
like avenue of elms, which runs along one of the 
terraces into which the hill is cut. By an ar- 
chitectural paradox the access to this luxurious 
home of Oriental despotism is — of all imagin- 
able gates — by the Gate of Justice. Everybody 
has heard of the mystic key and hand sculptured 
over the inner and outer door about which such 
charming romances have been written. Some 
fancy that the Arabs had such ideas of their 
power and trust in the law that they were per- 
suaded this Alcazar would not be opened to the 
enemies of the faith till the hand grasped the 
key. Unfortunately the same key is sculptured 
over other portals, and a less poetic and more 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I I 3 

rational interpretation is found in a passage of 
the Koran. There we read : ^ God delivered the 
keys to his elect with the title of porter and with 
power to give entrance to enemies.' The key, 
therefore, like the cross and key of the Catho- 
lic, was the principal symbol of the Moslem faith 
and represented the power of opening and shut- 
ting the doors of heaven. It is also certain that 
the hand was a blazon of the Andalusian Moors, 
used on their banners and standards from their 
entrance into Spain, suggestive of Gebel-al-Tarif 
or Gibraltar, 'Mount of Entrance,' as possessor 
of the key that opened its gates. According to 
the Moslem astrology, too, entangled as it is with 
their theology, the hand conjured away evils and 
exorcised demons. It was a species of talisman, 
or amulet, used for ages by Moors and their con- 
querors, and even down to the present day. The 
Egyptian hieroglyphics figured the hand as it is 
found here as the attribute of force ; the Arabs 
believed it to be the hand of God^ and compen- 
diously explained the Moslem law by the hand 
as a unity ; the five fingers representing the five 
principal precepts of their code, and the joints 
representing modifications of these precepts. 
This key unlocks for us the enchanted dwelling- 
place of the Moorish sultans, and the hand gives 
a hospitable welcome to its poetic solitudes. 
The Moorish kings, according to the Oriental 
8 



1 1 4 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

custom, sat in this gate and administered justice 
to their subjects. Well might the key symbolize 
Paradise, and Paradise on earth, for such was the 
Alhambra. Everywhere on its walls is the silent 
and splendid cry of the Koran : ' God is one ; 
God is eternal ; God neither begot nor was be- 
gotten ! ' The same uniqueness, perpetuity, and 
unknown origin may, almost, be ascribed to this 
clustered and fantastic mount. No other king's 
palace is like this ; its fragile ornamentation 
seems eternal, and its architects are unknown. 
It rose like a dream, a chiseled exhalation, the 
creation of poet and prophet, the first and fairest 
poem of the Arab bards. Of the three well-rec- 
ognized periods of glory which Arab art devel- 
oped in Spain, the purest, most typical, and 
glorious was that exemplified within the noble 
precincts of the Granada palaces. In them we 
find the inspiration under which the Moors 
wrought concrete ; the style is harmonious ; the 
form has become regular ; and one of the few su- 
preme efforts of human genius takes its origin, 
urged on by the sentiments, beliefs, and habitudes 
of an infidel golden age. Nowhere else in all 
the Spanish territories is to be found so complete 
an example or so classic a proof of the wondrous 
elements at work to show the civilization which 
eight centuries of constant progress had attained. 
Hence, none deserves such consideration, and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 1 5 

none has attained in the world's eye the exclu- 
sive renown which it enjoys j neither the Arabic 
civilization of Egypt, Persia, and Turkey reached 
the refinement and beauty of the Granada Al- 
hambra, nor are the glories of the reconquest 
symbolized in any Spanish monument more per- 
fectly than in this great bulwark of Mussulman- 
dom, so obstinately defended and so heroically 
won. 

Situated on the top of a hill, which was chosen 
as a secure and defensible place for the use of 
the state, it remained isolated and girdled by a 
line of strong walls and robust towers which 
flanked its gates. The steep declivities were 
clothed with frondage. The water taken from 
the Darro by means ingeniously adapted to bring- 
ing it to that height and causing it to feed the 
tanks, baths, and underground cisterns, flowed 
everywhere down the natural incline of the mount- 
ains, and produced these fantastic forests so 
celebrated throughout the world. Within the 
space contained in the walls rose the Alcazar, 
the mosques, the harem, the public offices, and 
the opulent habitations of a numerous court ; be- 
tween the fortresses and their battlements sprang ' 
up airy minarets ; precious arabesques were lav- 
ished on all sides, and the luxury of convenience 
and delight gave a magic charm to this singular 
sum-total. 



Il6 SPAIA^ IN PROFILE. 

Its whole space, with its forests and gardens, 
is sown with the spoils of twelve hundred years, 
and rendered beautiful by art and nature, where 
both elements have combined marvelously to 
produce a contrast inviting to meditation and 
study. Under the formidable frown of its forts 
and ramparts it nestled like some dragon-guarded 
princess. Placed on the summit of a mountain, 
like the feudal castles which thronged Europe 
during the Middle Ages, it had all the simple 
spaciousness of the Oriental castles, with the 
added beauty of lying in the most delicious spot 
Spain could offer, — a fact to which, perhaps, it 
owed the elegance of its construction and a pe- 
culiar style of ornamentatioi"w unrivaled among 
the innumerable palaces built by former khalifs. 
Here one may look in vain for the inflexible 
lines of the Greco-Roman monuments, the sym- 
metry of the Escorial courts or the quadrangles 
of the Renaissance j and yet there is a peculiar 
felicity and fitness in both site and system. In 
the house of the Arab his life is reflected, his de- 
sires are suspected, his wantonness is shadowed 
forth ; a life as various in its forms and propor- 
tions as it was fickle in its enjoyment of a refined 
sensuality. There is nothing like the splendid 
majesty of Roman courts : tiny rooms, tiny vesti- 
bules, slender, icicle-like pillars, narrow passages, 
obscure entrances, unostentatious exteriors : it 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I 1 7 

requires a peculiar divination and instinct to 
penetrate into his perfumed life and analyze its 
strange reserves. The heroic and majestic Arab, 
the musing Arab, the tender and gallant Arab, 
the cruel and tyrannic Arab : for every virtue 
and for every vice of his existence there is a form, 
an urn, a divan, an altar, on which rises the ruby 
and diamond flame of perpetual desire. A sword, 
a poem, a perfume, — such is khalif-life on the al- 
titudes of Granada. In the Alhambra all its mys- 
tery and luxury lie revealed ; titillating waters, 
scented vapors, rare silences and sunlight, glit- 
ter of marble and tremor of rose-gardens under 
morning-light, haunting music from upper cu- 
polas, flash and flight of silver-throated rivulets 
through the baths and patios^ singing birds and 
whispering women. Such is one aspect of this 
fierce and tender race. 

The present Alhambra is an agglomeration of 
three distinct palaces which, together with the 
palace built by Charles V. up against the Alham- 
bra walls, and for the construction of which 
priceless portions of the Moorish building were 
torn down, made four palaces within a space per- 
haps not so large as the Luxembourg Garden at 
Paris. All around rose beautiful towers literally 
bedewed, within, with the imaginative illustration 
of the Arabs ; the Vermilion Towers, the Tower 
of the Infanta, the Tower of the Seven Portals, 



I 1 8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the Tower of the Vigil, the Tower of the Beaks, 
and twenty others, each melodious with some 
Moorish romance or legend. It was through the 
Tower of the Seven Portals that Boabdil, last of 
the Moorish kings, left the Alhambra, and it was 
his last request to Isabella that no one might 
ever again be permitted to pass through it. The 
wish of El Zogoybi — the Unlucky — has been 
fulfilled.-^ The arch remains, but huge stones bar 
the entrance, which is half hidden by mounds of 
earth and ruins — impassable since the day that 
the luckless Moorish king with his band of cav- 
aliers sadly and silently rode through its gate, 
whilst distant shouts of triumph told them that 
the Christian hosts had entered the Alhambra by 
the Gate of Justice. Boabdil halted on a rocky 
height, — his mother and wife were already there, 
— then, turning to take a long, last look at his 
loved city he burst into tears, saying : * God is 
great ; but when did ever misfortunes equal 
mine ? ' 

* You do well,' exclaimed his wrathful mother, 
* to weep like a woman for what you failed to de- 
fend like a man ! ' 

This hill is still known as * La Cuesta de las 
Lagrimas ' — the Hill of Tears — and the sum- 
mit of the rock, where Boabdil bade farewell to 
his home is still called by the sorrowful name, 
*The Moor's Last Sigh.' 

1 Tollemache, Spanish Towns and Spanish Pictures. 



_ SPAIN IN PROFILE. I 19 

Does not this story recall another King, an- 
other Hill of Tears ? 

Just before you enter the Alhambra there is 
a broad open space, parapeted on several sides, 
with a booth in the centre. Beneath is the great 
reservoir for the water of the Darro — ' that water 
which, Gautier tells us, was the night before a 
streak of silver among the snows of the Sierras : 
such water as gods might drink and no longer 
remember their ambrosia. In that brilliant sun- 
light — XafjLTrpov rjXiov <t)do<;, — and white day — 
XevKov Kar' rj^ap — which ^schylos loved (Agam. 
645), how prodigally must this beauteous water- 
streak have shone as it spilt its silver down the 
mountain sides and emptied into this Stygian res- 
ervoir, thence to be drawn like jeweled mist to 
the light ! It is ice-cold water, having in it 
strange refreshment. Happy pilgrims, who can 
thus drink the Sierras under the towers of the 
Alhambra ! 

There was a strange stealth in the Arab nature. 
The gorgeous palaces which he reared were en- 
tered unostentatiously ; a small door — purpose- 
ly small, to avoid the Evil Eye — led into his 
Aidenn. So with the Alhambra : no one would 
imagine its fountained and filigreed interior from 
the homely outside, the mean little side-entrance 
through which one comes suddenly on its quaintly 
serene picture. Its rooms and courts are a se- 
ries of visions. 



I20 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

The first is the Court of Myrtles, where the 
sunlight is so golden that it seems the distillings 
of centuries, — a scene that at once transports 
you from Gothic Spain to the Orient. There is a 
tank in the centre full of lustrous water, rimmed 
by myrtle-hedges that for hundreds of years 
have fed on this shining air : water through 
which the light trickles and lights up the backs 
of thick-crowding gold-fish : water that seems to 
pasture on the lovely, uncertain shadow-pillars 
and shadow-cupolas, that dance on it from the 
neighboring walls. The pavement was of white- 
and-azure tiles, and the classic style of the court 
at once attracts the eye of the archaeologist, be- 
cause in it every detail of the Arab's most inti- 
mate life is before us. The richness and seclu- 
sion of his voluptuous tastes are foreshadowed in 
the great variety of doors and decorations and 
combinations which meet the eye. Numerous 
portals conduct to different apartments, whose 
use may be divined without entering ; precious 
divans, narrow sentry-boxes, sumptuous porticoes, 
two elegant cloisters, whose arches very nearly, 
in their curvature, resemble Roman arches, fili- 
gree doors, elegant upper galleries exquisitely or- 
namented in their tympanums with translucent 
arabesques, rhomb-shaped, interlaced with rib- 
bons, leaves, shells, and rude but delicate pine- 
cones. The patience of the artists who wrought 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 2 I 

these dainty windows is seen in the fact that each 
one of the blinds that close them is a mosaic of 
fifteen hundred pieces. The work is Meissonnier- 
like, delicate, infinitesimal. A star not much big- 
ger than a button is a combination of thirty 
pieces. Everywhere one sees the sweet and sin- 
uous curves of the Gothic line twining along 
the plinths of the opposite sides, among arches 
which, for the harmonious proportions of their 
archivolts, and the admirable turn of their col- 
umns, with capitals in azure and gold, are among 
the most precious objects of Mahometan archae- 
ology. The tranquil and shadowy cloisters at 
each end were the favorite lounging-places of 
Arab voluptuaries. They were lavishly orna- 
mented with quaint and devious conceits, and 
each has a stalactite roof covered with brilliant 
lapis lazuli blue. There were once places for 
bronze candlesticks, arms with enameled hilts, 
and jars of perfume. Imagine, then, the sheeted 
shimmer of water, the green wall of myrtle, the 
fantastic colonnades, the strange grace of the 
window-tiers, the tranquil irradiation and summer 
silence of such a spot ! 

All over the ends are scattered salutations and 
thanksgivings from the Koran, and in one place 
is a beautiful poem of twelve verses in Tamil 
metre, which breathes most eloquently of the im- 
passioned East. It begins : ' Blessed be he who 



122 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

gave thee command over his servants, and who 
exalted by thee Islam perfectly and benefi- 
cently ! ' 

This parallelogram-shaped court, in its entire- 
ness, grace, and delicacy is a jewel-box from out 
which leaps a sunny picture of Moorish life. 
Mellifluous sadness reigns amid its silence : the 
greater part of the scenes which, from the time 
of Muley-Hacen, hastened the downfall of the 
, Moors, took place in this court, says the legend. 
The monarch Zagal rested under these light and 
lovely galleries, and, surrounded by his women, 
is said to have lamented the misfortunes which 
were to come upon the Moors in the far future. 
Standing in it, a tide of thronging and poetic 
memories floods upon you : a dainty pathos 
broods about the place ; the open blue sky above 
looks in tenderly, and dwells pathetically upon 
the enamored water-mirror : gently move the myr- 
tles j gentle are one's thoughts in such a perfect 
spot. The poetry of languishment, of desire, of 
secrecy, of many-colored passion, of fantastic im- 
agination, of a voluptuous code, of a chivalric 
sensibility, of brilliant danger and audacity, of 
strange and tender vicissitude, has gathered here 
into such beauteous form as the world will not 
willingly let die. In these three or four rooms 
Moorish history is epitomized and crystallized. 
One hardly knows which way to turn: to the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 123 



I 

Tight is the Court of Lions, at the end the Hall 
of Ambassadors. 

The Hall of Ambassadors is the most spa- 
cious, and the most celebrated in the Alhambra. 
The Arabs excelled themselves in its amplitude 
and elevation, recalling the achievements of the 
Romans. For splendor of decoration, boldness 
of construction, and whimsical ornamentation it 
is unrivaled. It is entered by a long vestibule, 
boat-shaped, with exquisite arches and niches for 
water-jars, with the word ' liberality,' found every- 
where through the palace : a word which, in the 
Arabic usage, signified the desire to supply with 
water, for which manifold ledges and alcoves, ab- 
lutionary jugs and clay drinking-vessels, were 
placed here and there, — a reminiscence of the 
desert. The curves of an ellipse are seen in the 
roof of this vestibule, which is full of stars and 
geometric designs, once covered with blue and 
gold. The arch of entry into the Hall of Am- 
bassadors is like a piece of goldsmith's work, 
with its minute ornaments and delicate traceries, 
full of perfectly executed inscriptions. There 
are two wonderful niches, with arabesques inside, 
and tiny roofs of ebony and alerce-wood, one on 
each side. On one side is read : ' Praise to God : 
I take refuge in the God of dawn.' * The stars of 
the Zodiac bend down in love to me.' On the 
other, among other inscriptions, this : * He who 



124 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

approacheth me wearied with thirst will find 
water pure and fresh, sweet, and without any 
mixture.' Here they hang like dainty ear-rings, 
each on its side, each with its song of praise and 
salutation, a sort of pendant to the grandiose arch 
beneath which they are placed, — an arch of sim- 
ple, slender curvature, with inner pencil-border 
and microscopic details. As you enter, the up- 
cast eye catches sight of three balconies in each 
of the sides opposite the entrance, which, owing 
to the extraordinary thickness of the walls, form 
nine little alcoves, each with its own wonderful 
roof, traceries, and borders, and looking out into 
the domed Hall of Ambassadors through suites 
of ajimez^ or double windows, with their open- 
work crystal ornamentation, now gone. Imagine 
the bouquets of flower-like faces flitting about 
these shadowy balconies, while the gorgeous cere- 
monials of the East were going on below, — 
large-eyed, silken-clad apparitions, accompanied, 
peradventure, by pulse of perfume or throb of 
cithern. The roof is designed to represent the 
starry heavens, with the orbs constellated in 
groups, — a series of inclined planes, facets, and 
polygons, blending in the peculiar roof called 
arteso7tado. Over one hundred and fifty sorts of 
traceries are discovered on the walls of this 
apartment, — the Comoreh of the Moors, — not 
to mention the precious, almost invisible details 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 2 5 

in azure and black, which to-day would cost im- 
mense sums to reproduce with the same skill and 
precision. The name of the Sultan Abul Ha- 
chach, and the name of Yusuf, dwell among the 
happy spaces of these heavens ; and the value 
set upon the hall is seen in the inscriptions : ' On 
my part, morning and evening, lips of benedic- 
tion, prosperity, felicity, and friendship salute 
thee/ * I am as the heart in the midst of the 
members, for in the heart dwelleth the strength 
of the spirit and of the soul.' 

Here took place the council, presided over by 
Abu Abdillah XI., in the presence of all the 
magnates of the realm, when the surrender of the 
palace was agreed upon, and here the haughty 
Muza, knowing the secret intercourse of Boabdil 
with Ferdinand, taunted him with it, and de- 
parted to Africa to avoid the humiliation of im- 
prisonment. 

' Unhappy he who lost such a possession!' 
exclaimed Charles V., beholding the beauty of 
the landscape disclosed from its outer windows, 
when his chronicler, Guevara, recounted to him 
the legend of the Moor's Last Sigh. ' If I had 
been he,' cried the emperor, ' I should rather 
have chosen this Alhambra for a tomb, than to 
live outside of it in the Alpujarra ! ' 

Columbus once visited this apartment, says 
tradition, when he came before the Queen Isa- 



126 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

bella to expound his plans. ^ The King Chiquito 
(Boabdil),' says the veracious continuer of Her- 
nando del Palgar's chronicle, * held counsel with 
his mother, who was called Seb, of Christian na- 
tion, and who was a captive when the Moors 
plundered Cieza, which is a city of the kingdom 
of Murcia ; and as, at the time, she was but 
small, she became a Moor through flattery and 
other means, and turned out beautiful and good ; 
and the king, Muley Buasen, married her, be- 
cause among the Moors it was held good that the 
king or other cavalier should marry a damsel 
who from Christian had become a Moor. Of 
this marriage was born the King Chiquito, and 
this queen was of great and valiant soul, and op- 
posed with aH her power the King Chiquito, her 
son, intriguing with the Catholic kings, or con- 
certing with them, and bade him hope for pros- 
perous fortune, and die a king ; and owing to 
this, the King Chiquito was on his guard lest his 
mother should know he was treating with the 
Catholic kings, to deliver over to them the realm. 
When the capitulation was concluded, his mother 
suspected it, and dissembling it, it is said she 
took him by the hand, and entered into the tower 
of Comoreh, which is the spot where Granada's 
grandeur most lieth revealed ; and after having 
led him around the tower, and to the window, 
pointing, she said : ^ See what thou surrenderest, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. ^ \2J 

and remember that all thy forefathers died kings of 
Granada^ and that the kingdom ends in thee I ' 

At the side opposite the entrance arch is an 
alcove with arched windows and pillars between, 
from which all that Seb's words so eloquently 
suggest is grouped before the eye ; immense 
depths below, green with climbing trees; the 
Darro, hedged in by quaint walls, and spanned 
by quainter bridges, with towers at intervals ; Al- 
baicin, the gypsy quarter, with its strange popu- 
lation of human beings burrowing in the hill- 
sides ; the variegated roofs and architectural 
groups of the ancient city of the Khalifs ; the 
luxurious panorama of the Vega of Granada, 
filled with towns, forests, and wheat-fields ; last, 
but not least, the mighty Sierras, with their pink 
and lilac heads, surmounted by a dazzling comb 
of snow, and stretching to the skies. Well might 
the last of the Moorish kings shed bitter tears 
over such a scene. 

One may go over and over these beautiful leg- 
ends as over some priceless rosary, and still they 
seem ever fresh. 

No sooner have we read this dainty poem of 
the Court of Myrtles and the Hall of Ambassa- 
dors, than one still daintier rises before us, after 
passing through a narrow passage — the Court 
of Lions. It is one of the most beautiful and 
elegant structures of Mussulman architecture. 



128 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

There is nothing finer in all that the glowing im- 
agination of the race of Hagar has reared, whether 
in or out of Spain : transparent arcades \ groups 
of columns so clustered as to uphold their fragile 
burdens of ethereal arches and canopies like 
caryatides ; seven fountains perpetually murmur- 
ing amid the solitude of the place \ two sumptu- 
ous galleries advancing at each end from the 
cloisters beneath ; four cupolas exquisitely lifted 
to the sunny air by reed-like marble pillars slight 
as flower-stems, and eleven sorts of arches sur- 
passingly decorated ; the whole forming a pict- 
ure of delight, even after the ruin of seven centu- 
ries. 

The Court of Lions is the acme of the Alham- 
bra. As the returning Agamemnon was to Kly- 
taemnestra like summer in the winter-time ; so 
is this court the most cherished possession of 
the Arab palace. Without tanks, or gardens, or 
statues, or the ideal wealth gathered from paint- 
ing or sculpture, its simple self produces the most 
enchanting effect. No race of barbarians could 
have fashioned so perfect a place. Whichever 
way the eye looks, a varied combination of dif- 
ferent and yet symmetric arches presents itself, 
blending in the distance and producing an elf- 
ishly beautiful perspective ; and whether con- 
templated from the sides or angles, each of its 
decorations offers a diversity of multiple details 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 29 

SO harmoniously distributed that they do no prej- 
udice to the utmost regularity of form. To de- 
prive the tiled roofs of the sombre symmetric 
aspect of squares suspended on such delicate 
colonnades, the Moors raised cupolas, shaped 
like half-oranges, with their Eastern minarets in- 
terlocked with the ornamentation of the galleries 
and ceilings of the adjacent halls. The plan is 
one of perfect regularity and simplicity ; a par- 
allelogram formed by two perfect squares, in- 
cluding the vestibule. Here if anywhere in this 
charmed palace breathe and flute the voices of 
the East, Bagdad and Damascus, Ispahan and 
Cairo. Where was this transparent architecture 
invented — a palace of point-lace through which 
moonlight is pouring ? The galleries of its four 
sides are unequal ; the innumerable arches are 
not absolutely uniform ; the columns are not 
grouped together symmetrically ; the portals are 
not alike ; there is no such constant repetition 
of the same lines and heights as constitutes the 
chief charm of other architectures ; and still the 
whole spot breathes pregnant and subtle charm. 
Unity dwells in diversity ; compare arch with 
arch, roof with roof, one cluster of capitals with 
another ; and identity is not found in the act. 
But take in the whole labyrinth of structures at 
a glance — each one falls harmoniously into line, 



I30 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

and at a proper distance the effect is as perfect 
as any strophe of a poem. 

What a magic system had the Arabs of con- 
verting their ceilings into stalactite grottoes ! 
The effect is quaintly and curiously beautiful. A 
passage in the Koran throws light on this pecul- 
iar mode of architecture, unknown before the ad- 
vent of the prophet. The legend runs that it is 
a reminiscence of the Cave of Tur, when the spi- 
ders with their webs, the bees with their honey- 
combs, and the doves with their nests covered 
the entrance of the cave and concealed the hid- 
ing-place of Mahomet when he was fleeing to 
Abyssinia from the Koreysh. 

The vision of crystallized, trickling water is 
realized in these apartments. Looking up, one 
seems to be in the multitudinous sparkle and ex- 
foliation of a crystalline chamber, as if long, 
light, fulminant showers had been caught and 
transformed into wavy sculpture. There is a 
tremulous beauty about such ornamentation that 
befits the emotional and imaginative character of 
the Arab. Nothing can be more full of grace 
than an entrance arch thus ornamented. It is 
like walking underneath waving grasses and ferns 
chiseled into undulous masses out of the white 
heart of this Macaen marble. It was in 1377 
that the Arab artificer Aben Cencid began this 
court, which is neither Persian, Assyrian, Greek, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 3 I 

nor Roman j and yet time has but little impaired 
its beauty. The elegance of the pavilion roofs, 
composed, as they are within, of thousands of dif- 
ferent pieces, has never been equaled. 

In the centre is the famous fountain supported 
by twelve lions of antique form — the sole imita- 
tion, save certain problematical pictures — of 
any living thing to be found in all the varied em- 
bellishment of the Alhambra. It was an ablu- 
tionary fountain designed in accordance with the 
prescriptions of Mahometan law, and though now 
empty, was once full of water. There is a cer- 
tain rigidity in the limbs of the lions, which was 
purposely designed to give them a more architect- 
ural form ; and, according to the best writers, in- 
spirations drawn by the Arabs from the ruins of 
Persepolis and ancient Persia are observable in 
their monumental attitude and expression. 

Though an empty basin, the Fountain of Lions 
flows with a perennial stream of persuasive and 
fascinating legends ; here took place the mar- 
riage of Abu Abdallah Yusef and the lovely Za- 
hira ; here feasts were given in the Castilian 
fashion, and the Christian ambassadors of Castile 
and France were invited ; here the last of the 
Abencerrages was beheaded ; and many another 
romance of life and death was enacted. As I 
wandered about its spaces, there reigned every- 
where what I might describe as gorgeous still- 



132 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ness. A glorified calm seemed to distill from the 
liquid Spanish sun, and rest like a benediction 
on its marble pavement. A spell of beauty en- 
veloped the spot, and enthralled the idle feet as 
they tried in vain to leave this pathetically lovely 
precinct. Nobody was near ; I was alone ; the 
intense poetry of the place struck me with re- 
doubled force, and its delightful melancholy was 
like the dainty trouble of sweet music. 

Among all the salutations, eulogies to the Sul- 
tan, and suras from the sacred book with which 
its walls overflow, none is so rich in voluptuous 
hyperbole as the inscription which is sculptured 
on the border of the fountain-basin. Its conclud- 
ing line, which I applied involuntarily to the 
Court of Lions, is : ' The peace of God be with 
thee evermore ; thy pleasures be multiplied ; be 
thy enemies cast down ! ' 

Opening off the Court of Lions, to one side 
is the Hall of the Abencerrages, entered by a 
rarely ornamented door. Many traditions con- 
verge on this spot and throw their radiance on 
the mind of the spectator. According to one, 
the Abencerrages formed an influential tribe that 
possessed palaces in. the Alhambra and at the 
foot of the Sierras, and they favored the cause 
of the last king, persecuted by his father, Abul 
Hacen. This monarch had become enamored of 
Zoraya (the Isabel de Solis of some legends), and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 3 3, 

separated from his true wife, the Sultana Aixa. 
The favorite instigated the king to have Aixa's 
sons beheaded ; so that the Sultana feared for 
their lives, and saved them by letting them down 
from the windows of the Tower of Comoreh. 
She fled to Guadix and threw herself under the 
protection of the Abencerrages, while the tri- 
umphant Zoraya lived and reigned in the Alham- 
bra, adorned with the jewels of the mother of 
Boabdil. Again, in the time of Hernando de 
Baeza, secretary to the last king of Granada, this 
apartment was called the Chamber of Blood, and 
the Moors told how the seventeen Abencerrages, 
while going through a narrow passage, were sud- 
denly warned by a female slave not to proceed 
farther, but disregarding her warning, they were 
all beheaded near the Fountain of Lions. Spots 
of blood are still shown to mark the locality of 
this tragedy — spots less romantically explained 
by the porous nature of the Macaen stone, which 
absorbs moisture readily, though it is far from 
improbable that blood, too, may have been ab- 
sorbed by it. 

This chamber is one of the most elegant of 
the palace, rising in three perfectly proportioned 
bodies, and lighted by sixteen airy windows 
opened in the star-shaped roof. A sweet and 
tranquil light streams through these windows ; 
and the spacious alcoves that open at their sides, 



134 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

by means of four arches full of scarlet and azure 
ornaments, seem waiting for the luxurious divans 
that have disappeared, where the odalisques 
passed hours in amorous meditation. The ever- 
flowing fountain in the centre ; the brocade-like 
ornamentation in vivid relief around the walls ; 
the fantastic censers, encrusted with silver, for 
exhaling perfumes and giving light to this weird 
apartment, with their niches ; the quaint perti- 
nacity of lines and colors that exhausts itself in 
inundating these walls ; the flicker of the polished 
surfaces and the witchery of the thousand-fold 
arabesques ; — all this must have communicated 
a unique grace to the Hall of the Abencerrages 
and made of it something more than the vision of 
phantom architecture we see to-day. During the 
Renaissance of the sixteenth century, the alcove 
roofs were filled with paintings and reliefs. The 
ornaments of the entrance door are subtle be- 
yond description, and the eight-pointed star of 
the roof, with its prismatic triangles and compli- 
cated geometric traceries, is a masterpiece of 
some inspired mathematician. The same stalac- 
tite incrustation is richly used in this boudoir-like 
hall, whose small dimensions are in such striking 
contrast with the exuberance of skill lavished 
on it. First come two rows of horse-shoe arches ; 
then a tier of alcoves with their clustering col- 
umns and stalactite vaults ; then a row of six- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 35 

teen windows with their converging radii; then 
an intricate half-circular, half -conical roof with 
its many tints, — blue, brown, red, and gold. 

An Arabic chronicler says that Bulhaxix in- 
vented alchemy, and that, thanks to the gold men 
made by it, they were able to embellish the pal- 
aces, surround the city with a triple rampart, 
and build the Alhambra with walls of gold and 
precious stones. The fabrication of gold and 
the discovery of pearls and amethysts in the Al- 
hambra walls were not necessary to make us con- 
ceive the effect which this construction must have 
produced on the Eastern imagination. Vestiges 
of colors and gold are seen everywhere, and in 
the Plall of Justice nearly all the ornaments show 
them. The Hall of Justice is a nave with three 
lofty and five smaller domes, flanked by three 
elegant doors which communicate with the Court 
of Lions. It is divided into seven compartments 
or divans, where the Khalif sat and administered 
justice, and there are stalactite arches and literally 
a world of fine, fanciful ornamentation. Its sev- 
enty-five feet of length must have shone like a 
bed of flowers when the colors were fresh. The 
recesses in the side of the hall have ceilings filled 
with paintings on skins nailed to the wooden 
roof. They are of unknown origin \ and as they 
are full of representations of men, animals, and 
living things, contrary to Mahometan law, it is 
conjectured that they are late additions. 



136 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

But — 

* Aliens, bel oiseau bleu, 
Chantez la romance a madame,' — 

the true poem of the Alhambra — I have been 
hitherto describing its prose — is the Hall of the 
Two Sisters. It is a young girl's dream — a rev- 
erie from the inner circles of one's daintiest im- 
aginings — a picture of airy fragility and lux- 
ury, through which all that the Moors were and 
hoped to be floats like music. Here one comes 
upon something pure and perfect — an Arab idyll 
breathing the long distances, the sunset palms, 
the muffled cadences of the desert \ the stopping- 
place where his imagination halted before it took 
off its sandals to enter Paradise, the sweet core 
of his many-colored longings as they gazed a-sea 
from the portals of Smyrna and Morocco, and 
shifted and shaped themselves on the exalted 
horizon. The first word spoken is by the lovely 
azulejo socle, whereon, in f our-and-twenty verses, 
this poem is engraved in Arabic : — 

* I am the garden that appeareth in the morning decked 
with beauty : contemplate my beauty carefully, and 
thou shalt find my rank explained. 

In glory complete, for the sake of my lord, the prince Ma- 
homet, with the most noble of all that is past and 
to come 

How many delightful spaces offer themselves to the eyes ! 
The spirit of a man of sweet condition will see real- 
ized in them his dreams. 

Here often in the night the five Pleiades seek their rest, and 
the noxious air dawneth sweet and delightsome. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 37 

And there is an admirable cupola that hath few equals. In 
it are beauties occult and beauties manifest. 

The constellation of the Twins extends its hand towards it 
in sign of salutation, and the moon approacheth, for 
secret converse. 

And the shining stars would abide in it and not keep their 
courses fixed in the celestial vault ; 

And in its two galleries, like the youthful slaves, would 
hasten to render the same service with which they 
please him. 

It were not wonderful if the morning stars left their alti- 
tudes and passed the limits fixed. 

And they would await the orders of my lord, for his service 
most high, winning more lofty honor. 

Here, then, is a portico of such beauty that the Alcazar hath 
in it what excelleth the arch of Heaven. 

With how many ornaments hast thou increased it, O king ! 
Among its adornments there are colors that put to 
shame the precious vestments of Yemen. 

How many arches rise in its roof on columns bathed in 
" light ! 

Thou wilt believe that they are planets revolving in their 
orbits and obscuring the clear glories of the coming 
dawn. 

The columns possess every sort of marvel. The fame of 
their beauty flieth and hath become proverbial. 

And there is lucent marble that sprinkles its clearness and 
illumines what was left in darkness. 

When it shineth sunlight-smitten, thou wilt believe them 
pearls by reason of their size. 

Never have we beholden an Alcazar of more lofty appear- 
ance, of more clear horizon, or of more fitting ampli- 
tude. 

Never have we seen a garden more delightful in flowers, 
more ambient in perfume, or more exquisite in fruits. 



138 SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 

It payeth double and with ready money the sum which the 
Cadi of beauty hath bestowed upon it. 

For from the morning the hand of the zephyr is full of coins 
of light that contain the wherewithal to pay. 

And the rays of the sun fill the precinct of the garden and 
its branches, leaving them beautiful.' 

The Arab imagination has reached its utmost 
refinement here. The stalactite roof is made of 
five thousand separate pieces and is a network of 
tiny domes and vaults. The azulejo-\!A^'s> of the 
basement are of great elegance, most difficult in 
combination and outline, and there are shields 
and medallions bearing the arms of Ibn-1-Ahmar 
on the wall. All is peace, whiteness, passion, 
stillness, in this inimitable spot ; a fountain flick- 
ers in the centre ; aerial alhamies or alcoves lift 
their latticed windows from out a multitude of 
frost-like traceries ; the dome is of unparalleled 
boldness and beauty ; and so exquisite the geo- 
metric proportions that not the slightest detail 
could be touched without marring their perfec- 
tion. All the rooms of this hall were the apart- 
ments of the favorite women who lived in inde- 
pendence in the same harem. The tradition is 
that two fair captives dwelt here and that they 
died of grief and jealousy on beholding from 
their latticed windows the scenes of love enacted 
within the garden of the ladies. Others derive 
the name from the two marble slabs in the pave- 
ment. Voluptuousness has here become spirit- 



I 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 39 

ualized into a fragrance, and the whole place ex- 
hales the ardors and languors of an intense life. 
The apartment is a white rose \ its illuminated 
elegance is unknown elsewhere in the world; 
its serene spirituality is a thing of angels ; its 
marble spaces are truly, as the inscription says, 
the dwelling-place of the Pleiades. In no place 
have the throbbing wealth, the voices and the 
silences of the Semitic nature come to such ar- 
ticulation. Could a perfume live, its columned 
exhalations would take form and fire in this 
shape. A Watteau interior as compared with this 
is simply vulgar ; Pompeii is garish. The Moors 
seemed to build by moonlight and to breathe 
through their architecture the plaintiveness, ten- 
derness, and purity of the perennial star. They 
instinctively avoided discords ; all is with them 
harmony, deep-laden sense of beauty, refinement 
of detail, mystery, secrecy, spirituality. Clay 
seemed too coarse ; so they worked in spider- 
web, gossamer, mother-of-pearl. Colors and 
gold they used lavishly, but with the utmost del- 
icacy. The great vase of the Alhambra is a 
triumph of their skill in enameling. They loved 
water and imitated its fluent forms, and they 
transferred its sparkle to their domes. Exploring 
the under-world, they brought forth from its dark- 
ness this ethereal stalactite-architecture which 
nature preciously and jealously builds up in her 



I40 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

heart ; and they hung it in the vaults and arches 
of their palace-roofs, there to shine evermore. 
They called in the flowers and winds, and fixed 
their tints and shadows in their alha77ties. They 
did not care for the outsides ; these were often 
rude and homely ; and superstition bade them be 
on their guard. But within, the w^inding spaces 
of the desert, the reminiscences of Damascus, 
the sea with its curves and crests, the beauty of 
the mirage, the sound of fountains, the grace and 
airiness of the Bedouin tent, — all found a space. 
And at the heart of all these sense-forms, sur- 
rounded by his odalisques, his censers, his poetic 
Koran, his muezzin-cries, the veiled and allego- 
rized poetry of his life, sat the Defender of the 
Faith. 

* Mateo spread his cloak for me in the fount- 
ain in the Hall of the Abencerrages, over the 
blood stains made by the decapitation of those 
gallant chiefs, and I lay half an hour looking up- 
ward : and this is what I made out of the dome. 
From its central pinnacle hung the chalice of a 
flower with feathery petals, like the crape myr- 
tle of our Southern States. Outside of this, 
branched downward the eight rays of a large 
star, whose points touched the base of the dome \ 
yet the star was itself composed of flowers, while 
between its rays and around its points fell a 
shower of blossoms, shells, and sparry drops. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I4I 

From the base of the dome hung a gorgeous pat- 
tern of lace, with a fringe of bugles, projecting 
into eight points so as to form a star of drapery, 
hanging from the points of the flowery star in 
the dome. The spaces between the angles were 
filled with masses of stalactites, dropping one 
below the other, till they tapered into the plain 
square sides of the hall. 

* In the Hall of the Two Sisters I lay likewise 
for a considerable time, resolving its misty glories 
into shape. The dome was still more suggestive 
of flowers. The highest and central piece was a 
deep trumpet flower, whose mouth was cleft into 
eight petals. It hung in the centre of a superb 
lotus-cup, the leaves of which were exquisitely 
veined and chased. Still farther below swung a 
mass of mimosa blossoms, intermixed with pods 
and lance-like leaves, and around the base of the 
dome opened the bells of sixteen gorgeous tu- 
lips. These pictures may not be very intelligible, 
but I know not how else to paint the effect of 
this fairy architecture.' ^ 

From the delicate presence of the Two Sisters 
one passes an ante-chamber with vaulted roof of 
admirable complexity, and enters a little apart- 
ment called in the Arabic, Daraxa, place to enter 
or ascend ; but the poets from the sixteenth 
century on suppose it to be the name of a favor- 

1 Bayard Taylor, Lands of the Saracens. 



142 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ite Sultana who passed her days in this delight- 
ful chamber, — a tradition based upon the name 
of the Sultana Aixa, a name borne by many 
queens whose chosen abode this is said to have 
been. Hence the name, Mirador de Lindaraxa, 
Boudoir of Lindaraxa. The entrance arch is a 
true inspiration ; nothing richer, more rechercM^ 
more delicately simple. Beyond are the arched 
ajimez windows with the pillar between and a 
vista of the garden on which Washington Irving 
looked when he lived in the Alhambra and com- 
posed his charming stories, — the * poet Irving ' 
as the Spaniards most truly call him. Its walls 
are covered with Cufic ornaments. One part of 
this precious structure is crowned by an open- 
work traceria made of wood, and there were sky- 
lights filled with many-colored crystals through 
which sweet mysterious light percolated, filtered 
of undue garishness and full of the twilight so 
congenial to the Arab. The light from the gar- 
den was veiled by daintily wrought open-work 
blinds, and the whole harmonized perfectly with 
the colors of the walls and the translucent roof. 
The four walls of this boudoir are composed of 
double and triple pointed arches under a com- 
mon centre ; the tile-work is of the finest, and 
shows labor of indescribable patience ; the floor 
was a carpet of mosaics, and the whole reveals 
an enchantment and voluptuous mystery un- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I43 

equaled in the palace. The Arabs covered the 
smooth spaces of the ante-chamber with carpets, 
worked leather, or woven panoplies of divers 
colors j and here and there were basket-like 
cranes for holding clothing, arms, and other ob- 
jects. The tiny apartment is full of notable in- 
scriptions, filled with that reference to light with 
which the Arab was always intoxicated. 

I sat at the window as if spell-bound. Beneath 
was a fountain, half Arab, half Renaissance j be- 
yond were walls over which dense orange-trees 
full of fruit were trained ; the same ancient yel- 
low sun filled the court as with a pool of gold ; 
and the fountain and garden of Lindaraxa lay 
beneath it in an ecstasy of stillness and beauty. 

This court is inclosed by cloisters and is of 
the time of Charles V. Through it you enter the 
Chamber of Secrets, — an ellipse with an acous- 
tic device by which every whisper can be heard. 

But it would take hundreds of pages to go 
conscientiously through a description of the Al- 
hambra. The palace could be put many times 
over into one of the huge king's barracks of Lon- 
don, Paris, or Berlin ; and yet there is such in- 
genuity, patience, skill shown in it, that Contreras 
and his father devoted a life-time to studying 
and restoring it, and its ruins alone have pro- 
duced a school of Spanish art. What can one 
weak pilgrim do to recompose this rifled mau- 



144 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

soleum of Islam and bring it vividly before an 
absent eye ? With one glance at the Queen's 
Boudoir — the Peinador de la Reina — the de- 
scription must end. 

What a panorama unfolds from this side-piece 
to the Mirador de Lindaraxa ! the ancient city of 
Albaicin ; the walls constructed by Bishop Gon- 
zalo, running over the far-off hill-sides ; the low 
houses of the barrier of Hajariz ; the seminary 
of San Cecilio, redolent of devout associations ; 
the delightful vineyards ; the hermitage of San 
Miguel above the Aceituni fort, with its long-ven- 
erated image ; the old Alcazaba-buildings remote 
on the 'mountain -top, once the residence of 
Arabic dignitaries ; the Palace of the Generalife 
on the hill to the right, partly hidden by the ad- 
joining Tower of the Ladies ; and beneath and 
within this rare scene the silvery Salom (now the 
Darro), which, said Marmol, came from the 
mountain of the myrtles and ran grains of gold, 
until it mingled with the Genii and flowed in 
company with it through the heavenly plain of 
Granada. 

This tower or minaret wherein lies the queen's 
boudoir was not originally arranged as at present. 
The corridor surrounding it was then a series of 
pointed battlements ; the windows had translu- 
cent blinds ; and under the threshold of to-day 
was the small temple erected to the Sultan Abul 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 45 

Hachach in memory of his welcome. Its sides 
were open to the east; in it the emirs awaited 
the coming of the sun, and in its isolated precinct 
they murmured the holy prayers of the morning. 
The inscriptions on ceiling and door, the saluta- 
tions and Koranic verses on the columns and 
panels of the hall beneath, all point to the sacred 
use to which it was put. But the Pompeian paint- 
ings, the perfumers in one corner over which the 
Christian ladies stood, to let the vapor fill their 
garments, and the traces of Italian pencils of 
the Renaissance, all point to its desecration and 
subsequent diversion from this original purpose. 

Below this suite of rooms I have been describ- 
ing are the Hall of Couches and the Baths. In 
the Hall of Couches are divans, an alcove de- 
signed to hold some hidden favorite, and the 
tribunes where the odalisques recited the kasidas, 
sang, and played their stringed instruments while 
the Sultan enjoyed his hours of repose. It was an 
undressing room, in preparation for the temper- 
ature of adjacent rooms where no current of air 
could penetrate. The floor is of glazed mosaic, 
and the whole place, together with its elaborate 
appointments, is full of epicurean suggestiveness. 
But it will be impossible to enter into a descrip- 
tion of the Hall of the Grating, the antiquities of 
the archives, the court of the chapel, the mosque, 
the abandoned palace of Charles V. (which re- 



146 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

sembles an unfinished bull-ring), adjoining the 
Court of Lions, the Tower of the Poniards and 
of Mahomet, the various wells, the church of 
San Francisco, or the ancient environs, gates, 
and alcazars of Granada. On the Alhambra-hill 
alone there are more than twenty towers, some 
with decorations and legends of great beauty. 
Though the Arab palace proper is so small, the 
whole — terraces, gates, towers, fortresses, walls, 
pleasure-grounds, promenades, palaces, elm-walks, 
churches, mosques, stables, and convent — makes 
a cluster which once transformed the hill into a 
city. 

Of their one book they have made the most, 
for out of it has sprung the palace of Abdul-ar- 
rhaman. 



IX. 

In hir is heigh beautee, withoute pride, 
Yowthe, withoute grenehede or folye ; 
To alle hir werkes vertu is hir gyde, 
Humblesse hath slayn in hir al tirannye. 
She is mirour of alle curteisye ; 
Hir herte is verray chambre of holynesse, 
Hir hand, ministre of freedom for almesse. 

Chaucer, Man of L awes Tale. 

Almost the first bright speck of flowing water 
one sees in Spain is the Guadalquivir, the river of 
the Arabs. Imperishably associated with them, 
with the ancients, and with Columbus, its ar- 
rowy sparkle is a true refreshment, and the great 
curve which it describes at Seville seems to sug- 
gest a grandeur that has passed away. The his- 
tory and antiquities of this one place would 
throw their radiating threads over the whole 
country and bring in contribution the Roman 
chronicles, the church histories, the Moslem 
domination, and the whole rosary of Christian 
kings. It is a singularly interesting spot. The 
Andalusian type is here seen in perfection. The 
wit, the jest, the romance, the music of this pe- 
cuHar people — their infinite knack at rhyming, 
their proverb-making, their rhythmic and sensu- 



148 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ous intellectuality, if one may so speak — are no- 
where so ripe and rich as in Seville. Take away 
Andalusia, and one might look around for Spain ; 
take away Seville, and one might ask in vain for 
Andalusia. An evening in a square in Seville is 
a revelation. Life is not an even flow with these 
people ; it is a tumult, a sort of passion. The 
noisy sunlight, the loud sky, the ringing air, the 
tumultuous character of land and laborer, bring 
one's psychologizing to a stand-still, and one is 
lost in wonder at the freakish versatility, the pet- 
ulance, the emotion of the Andalusians. Where 
the air never sparkles with frost, all the sparkle 
has gone into the people. For a thousand years 
they have been overshadowed by one great ca- 
thedral or another, and their souls have pros- 
pered. The Sevillians can put up their hands to 
their eyes and see Julius Caesar in the great dis- 
tance of twenty centuries, anchoring his fleet be- 
fore the Tower of Gold, beleaguering, conquer- 
ing, reestablishing, and leaving behind — as he 
nearly always did — the autograph of his own 
name to the re-conquered and re-christened city. 
As nearly everything in London is Nelson This^ 
or Wellington That^ so in antiquity, Ccesarea^ 
Ccesarea Augusta^ Julia Romulea^ etc., showed 
traces of what Marcus Aurelius called * Caesar- 
ized ' self-perpetuation. And the bloodhounds 
of history might, like the Eumenides of ^schylos, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 49 

scent out the great conqueror by the blood he has 
left behind. 

The first glimpse we get of Seville is a scarlet 
sunrise. This is no place to go into the wrath 
and wrangling of Caesar and Pompey ; but 
throughout Spain, at the beginning of our era, 
we find them in the attitude of Canova's Boxers. 
The jangle of their sweet bells out of tune has 
rung on down to our times, and not a book on 
Seville can be written, hardly a line on Seville 
can be read, without interminable references and 
cross-references to these delectable athletes. 
Let them anchor their fleets and butcher their 
tens of thousands, then, in peace ; it is none of 
our business. The Roman patricians who wormed 
themselves into the highest offices of the place, 
surrounded themselves with lordly monuments 
and fortifications, and gave up the light of Rome 
for the loveliness of Seville, have left behind 
them the thinnest spider-web of connection with 
the present. The greatest glory of once glorious 
Cordova is that she has given her name to the 
guild of French shoemakers ; Corduba^ the brill- 
iant hearth-stone of Roman poets and philoso- 
phers, has become the Cordonnier of the Rue du 
Bac. jFulia Romulea might have been proud 
indeed if people had literally walked in her mem- 
ory, as is the case with her rival. But she con- 
tents herself with being the home of the prettiest 



150 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

women in Spain, the seat of a once splendid 
university, the heir of the mighty sovereignty 
of the Moors, the city of the strange worship 
of Adonis and Astarte, and the pink of teeming 
idleness, indolence, and plenty. The Sevillians 
laugh at the abounding calabashes and tomatoes 
of the Cadiz region, and have a story that their 
neighbors once tried to scale the heavens with 
their tomato baskets ; but they need not talk, 
there is plenty to scoff at on the Guadalquivir. 
For example, one would not judge by the rags 
in which the good city abounds that scores of 
thousands of people were once occupied there in 
the manufacture of silk. In the Spanish roman- 
ceros the grandees are always clad in silk, with 
mottoed Toledo blades, steeds of fire and wind, 
and shirts of mail like the ringed meshes of 
Bedvulf. They stalk up and down the ballads 
after the fashion of the old heroes of the boards 
breathing fury and verse. You wonder where 
they got leisure to do their doughty deeds, so 
milliner-like is the cataloguing of their dress. 
The most celebrated armor of the most celebrated 
captains of the Middle Ages may be seen in the 
armory at Madrid ; and precious little of it seems 
to have seen any service. Historic doubts seize 
one in the very presence of Don Juan of Austria's 
sword and under the very edge of Don Jaime's 
rapier. 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE, 1 5 I 

From a remote time the people of Seville have 
been the same ; they wept and wailed in the 
train of Venus, commemorating the lost Adonis, 
as they now weep and wail in Holy Week, com- 
memorating the lost Redeemer. Their customs, 
fairs, festivals, household gods, have been touched 
with the chrism of the new religion, but remain 
substantially the same ; only, as Gibbon would 
say, they have accepted with alacrity the advan- 
tageous offer of immortality. Underneath the 
great and noble cathedral may almost be heard 
the strange murmurs of a prehistoric Venus-wor- 
ship, as in some Tannhauser-legend, for the ex- 
quisite fabric is reared over the ancient temple 
and smothers as it were the cry of those ancient 
times. One is quite sure that just such conver- 
sations as Matthew Arnold has so daintily ren- 
dered from the Greek of Theocritus may be over- 
heard any day, even now, under the arches and 
cloisters of Seville Cathedral. There is something 
quite inextinguishable in the strain of southern 
nations ; their characteristics have always been 
the same. After the Moors had made Seville so 
splendid, it is sad to read of their overthrow and 
the vanishing from the face of the earth of all 
their elegance and grace. The soft flow and 
fantasy of the Arabic verse have captivated the 
world's ear and made it listen with sympathy to 
the legends of the Khalifs. Spanish hidalgos get 



152 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

little justice beside the glittering squadrons of 
Abdul-Aziz and the Almohades. There is some- 
thing incredible in the story that Seville was 
once a dependency of Damascus. It is neces- 
sary to look into Gibbon's record of the sudden 
spread and prosperousness of the Osmanlees 
before thorough acknowledgment of the truiii 
of history is made. In his noble story of Ma- 
hometan conquest we see the splendor of their 
achievements, the spread of their intelligence, 
the superiority of their arts and sciences, and the 
gifts and gallantry of their leaders. It seems as 
if they civilized the Spaniards and taught the 
most passionate of Christians the true doctrines 
of the cross. Seville under them became a star 
which shed the light of their glorious khalifate 
over the surrounding nations. A single relic of 
their dominion — the Giralda Tower — surpasses 
all Christian belfries, even Giotto's, in beauty 
and harmony. They had published encyclopae- 
dias when the barons of England had yet to 
learn how to write their own names. Chemistry 
was to them a science when to the rest of Europe 
— even to Dante — it was a black art. Aristote- 
lian philosophy was preserved in the deep wells 
made by them when abject illiteracy had befallen 
the heirs of the Greeks and Romans. And yet 
the roaring beef-eaters of St. Ferdinand and Fer- 
dinand and Isabella — ' the flower of Castile and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, I 53 

Leon ' — drove them out by the hundred thou- 
sand and made the country the wilderness it de- 
served to be. 

No change of dynasty, however, could change 
the conformation of the country — the beautiful 
mountain lines, the valleys green with cork-trees, 
the everglades along the rivers, the mountain 
streams falling like a crystal bath down the 
cliffs and precipices, and the orchards that min- 
gled their perpetual bloom with undying olive 
and oak. The cypress-loving Moslems had left 
behind them this constant mourner over their 
lost sovereignty. Their great, low, jewel-lighted 
mosques were torn down or incorporated wath the 
structures of the new faith. Their schools of 
learning became a hissing to the Catholic arch- 
bishops and all the light of their poetry and ro- 
mance seemed to go out in the darkened land. 
The city of Pleasure became the city of Super- 
stition ; no more Castilian princes came to the 
Arabic universities to learn the civilization and 
the refinement of the East. What an utter sun- 
beamless twilight succeeded the rich day ! 

For a town of some one hundred and forty 
thousand inhabitants Seville has a very varied 
life and an unusual variety of interesting objects. 
Apart from the psychological features of its gypsy 
and Andalusian population, the bright Eastern pa- 
tios wreathed in flowers and filigree, the spacious 



154 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

chronicles of its legendary and poetic history, and 
the conservatism of its habits, it has had a very 
distinct literary and artistic significance in the 
peninsula. The most famous of the Spanish 
painters came from Seville. * Difficult and dif- 
fuse would be the task of citing,' says a Spanish 
author,^ * all the illustrious men who in sacred 
things, in arms, in arts, and in sciences have 
shed distinction on this city by their birth.' The 
poets Herrera, Aleman, Urquijo, La Cueva, 
Jauregin, Alcazar, Rioja, Carvajal, Reinoso ; the 
painters Murillo, Velazquez, Zurbaran, Cespedes, 
Herrera, and Roelas; and archbishops, patriarchs, 
generals, bishops, mathematicians, captains-gen- 
eral, men of science and adventure, actors and 
dramatic authors, presidents of the Junta, publi- 
cists, prose writers, like Fernan Caballero, and 
the translator whom Spanish hyperbole calls ''el 
sublime traductor de los Salmos, came from Seville, 
After such an enumeration one may well be pre- 
pared for a Te Deam Sevilliam., and is not at all 
astonished to find mention of the town in the 
dusty volumes of Mela, Pliny, Ptolemy, and 
Strabo. We are told that one of the triumphs 
of Christianity was the conversion of the tem- 
ples of the Sun, of Hercules, of Mars, Bacchus, 
and Venus, at Seville, into ' parishes ' such as 

1 Sevilla, Historica, Moimmeittal^ Artistica y Topographica, 
Sevilla, 1878. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. T55 

Santa Marina, San Romano, San Ildefonso ; and 
it is added that so illustrious a city could not but 
receive the evangelic light as it poured forth from 
the capital of the world. Seville in Roman times, 
in Vandal times, in Moslem times, and in Span- 
ish times, has a series of physiognomies quite as 
varied and astonishing as those attributed to Gar- 
rick. It lived on in successive stages of loss of 
identity down to the times of the ' Serene Sirs, 
Dukes of Montpensier ' — called in Spanish SS, 
A A. R. R, los Sermos Sres. Duqties de Montpensier 
— who established their august court there in 
1848. One would no more undertake to disen- 
tangle these successive civilizations than to un- 
wind the historic skein which bears so prominent 
a part in the curious coat-of-arms of the city. A 
quaint gleam is cast on the history of the place 
by mentioning the titles it enjoys : Very Noble^ 
Very Leal, Very Heroic, and Unconquerable Seville; 
each one of which, as it was" successively added, 
forms a chapter in its history. 

In character and manners the Sevillian type is 
the most decided in Andalusia. Their exaggera- 
tion of language has become proverbial : * Child 
of gold, and child of silver, and child of pearls, 
and child of carbuncles,' is a specimen of the pet 
language applied by a great Spanish writer to 
a fair young gypsy girl. They have all the char- 
acteristics of the South vividlv concentrated : 



156 SPAIN IN PROFIIE. ' 

sensibility, imagination, gayety, promptness and 
fertility of invention, vehemence of expression, 
rapidity in perceiving relations, and metaphors, 
epigrams, and quips enough to make the fortune 
of several Lopes. Great aptitude for painting, 
poetry, and the fine arts exists among them ; great 
inaptitude for the abstract, speculative, meta- 
physical side by side with it. Indeed, a glance 
at the brilliant physical environment in which 
their lives are set — the sky, the landscape, the 
sunny voluptuousness of air and out-door life — 
will go far to explain the fullness of their imagi-- 
nations and the emptiness of their understandings. 
They recoil from meditation; they take a book 
to church, and read out of that; they listen to 
beautiful music and have little taste for analysis. 
They have the repute of being lazy and inert, — 
qualities no doubt engendered by the languor of 
the Andalusian climate, the facility with which 
the means of subsistence are obtained, and the 
somewhat easy accumulation of property. North- 
ern people who establish themselves under this 
fervid sun soon become as loose-limbed as the An- 
dalusians themselves. What particularly strikes 
an Anglo-Saxon is the religious enthusiasm of 
the people. Seville has always been celebrated 
for sumptuous fimcciones — gorgeous religious 
ceremonies in Holy Week and at Noche Buena, 
which rival those of Rome under the irresponsi- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I 5 7 

bles, and even to-day combat with the bull-fight 
in attracting visitors. Alms-giving is certainly 
an invention of the Spanish Catholics, for no- 
where has the growth — fungoid or otherwise — 
attained such luxuriance as in Spain, and no- 
where in Spain such luxuriance as at Seville. 
Every pillar, post, and chancel railing in a Span- 
ish church is peppered with alms-boxes of every 
description, from those purporting to be * for 
the edification of this holy church ' to those 
purporting to be for the refreshment of souls in 
purgatory. They are a lavish, wasteful people. 
The crowded taverns, clubs, and cafes show the 
devotees of piquet and ombre (which Catherine 
of Braganza introduced into England) in full 
passion ; among a party of friends each insists 
on paying for what has been ordered, though he 
may have in his pockets not more than the single 
coin which is the dinner-in-the-pocket-book of a 
whole family. True and counterfeit indigence 
abounds : a fact which seems to spring from the 
impressionable nature of the Andalusians who 
cannot bear the sight of misery, but must needs 
help it upon its legs again ; sturdy legs enough, 
too, which do not fail to walk forthwith into 
the Spanish purse with the Seven-League Boots. 
The streets are filled with itinerant venders of 
every dye, who form a class quite dangerous to 
society; they have a peculiar faculty of invest!- 



158 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

gating each other's entrails with navajas and get- 
ting up a tragedy in the streets at a moment's 
notice. The artisans proper are lively, * smart/ 
active, energetic, and noisy, but honorable and 
diligent Nowhere in Spain are there so many 
enamored swains, love-lorn bachelors, and jeal- 
ous husbands. Balcony interviews are frequent 
by day and night, and courtship through Venetian 
blinds has become a science. The women of 
Seville are slight, intense-looking little things, as 
vivacious as a canary, as pliable as wire, as agile 
as a cat. They pride themselves on airiness of 
figure, brilliance of eye, enchanting conversa- 
tional power, small feet, and enormous passions. 
One had as well touch an electric eel as an An- 
dalusian woman. I cannot vouch for their con- 
stancy in love, their carefulness and neatness in 
family life, their tender solicitude, their purity, and 
their sweetness ; every Sevillano, however, would 
instantly challenge you to deadly combat if you 
doubted in the least that each and every Sevil- 
lana possessed each and every one of these traits. 
It has been well said of Seville that from an- 
cient times the arts have had constant occupation 
in building, rebuilding, and preserving churches 
and monasteries ; the * gentility,' as the Spaniards 
quaintly call the Gentiles, abounded in temples ; 
the Christians, under the enlightened administra- 
tion of the Moors, were permitted to erect and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I 59 

retain houses dedicated to their own worship, 
side by side with the overshadowing elegance 
and richness of the Saracen mosques ; and the 
Saracen mosques, at the re-conquest, were con- 
verted by a sprinkle of holy water into Catholic 
churches. 

The glory of Andalusia — perhaps the most 
elegant thing of its kind in the world — is the 
Cathedral of Seville. It is broader than St. 
Paul's at London, but not so long by more than 
a hundred feet ; while the Giralda Tower, built 
nearly a thousand years ago, would come within 
a few feet of the cross which surmounts the vast 
and ugly pile of Wren. It is one of the most 
eloquent voices of the Dark Ages speaking to 
our generation of a faith that is lost. It has the 
advantage over St. Paul's of standing in a large 
square, whence the incomparable details of the 
exterior — tower, buttresses, pinnacles, courts — 
can be seen in perfection. Think of a great 
Gothic mountain three hundred and seventy-eight 
feet long and two hundred and fifty-four feet 
broad before you, with a glorious sentinel tower 
three hundred and fifty feet high standing beside 
it, upon a raised terrace reached by encircling 
flights of stairs. It has been compared to a 
grand vessel at sea in full sail, with all its pen- 
nons flying, high-pooped, massive, and filled in 
every detail with the harmony of artistic propor- 



l60 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

tions. You can enter by any one of nine doors, 
the most beautiful of which is beneath a splen- 
did horse-shoe arch, and leads into the Court of 
Oranges, thence to the Cathedral. Five aisles 
fill it with a forest of pillars, which spread out as 
they touch the roof into the lovely, fan-like radi- 
ations of a grove of palms, the symbol of peace. 
All these lock and interlock, forming a groined 
roof of sixty-eight compartments. All the gar- 
dens of the Goths shed their leaves over the cen- 
tral pillars, and round the screen of the high 
altar. Imagine the radiance streaming from the 
ninety-three painted windows, five of which are 
wheels as full of glory as the windows in the 
Eve of St. Agnes ! Here are the Scriptures dyed 
blood-red, purple, and amaranth j it is an incar- 
nation in flesh-tints ; it is a Pilgrim's Progress 
and a martyrology in colors. There is awe upon 
you as you enter and look up. The choir, as 
usual in the Spanish cathedrals, has been pushed 
forward nearly to the centre, and grievously in- 
terrupts the calm and magnificent flow of the 
spaces. There are one hundred and seventeen 
stalls in it, beautifully carved, surmounted by a 
sort of cornice of turrets and statuettes. The lec- 
tern is very rich, and there are many mass books, 
admirable for their miniatures. What shame 
these noble organs, mellowed by the harmonies' 
of hundreds of years, cast on our wretched little 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. l6l 

vox'humana boxes with their feverish squeak ! 
A good organ, like a good violin, improves with 
age, and gathers about it an intensity of sweet- 
ness which seems to proceed from constant use. 
In the centre of the nave lies the memorial 
slab of Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great 
navigator, with the well-known inscription : — 

* A Castilla y a Leon 
Nuevo mundo dio Colon.' 

The High Chapel contains a tabernacle for the 
elements, of silver gilt^ unique in its kind. The 
usual reliquary contains the usual Virgin Mary, 
— or what are called relics of her. The Chapel 
Royal glitters with gold, silver, bronze, and crys- 
tal, and contains no end of sceptred ashes. The 
sword of the Holy King Ferdinand is kept here : 
quick-footed lads dart about with tapers, and take 
you here and there in this pantheon of decayed 
notabilities, — kings, queens, coffins, and banners. 
You are always looking for something, and never 
see it ; then you are summoned out ; then you 
pay. Such is the Chapel Royal, in brief. The 
sacristan would go on till doomsday, till your 
very soul chattered kings and queens, if you 
would let him. Not that he or any of his tribe 
know the slightest of Spanish history : it is a 
sort of idiotic talk, which perpetuates itself in 
European cathedrals, as much a part of the whole 



1 62 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 



1 



as the petrified patriarchs and prophets that grin 
around. If every one of the cicerones could be 
safely urned and coffined, — here especially in 
Seville, where they pounce upon you from behind 
every pillar, — the relief of the traveler would 
certainly be great. 

Clouds, angels, thrones, and saints people the 
huge canvases that light up the obscurity of 
many of the chapels, the most interesting of 
which is the Chapel of the Baptistery, containing 
the most lovely Saint Anthony of Murillo. On 
Guy Fawkes' Day, 1874, a thief cut out the ex- 
quisite figure of the saint, who is represented 
on his knees, gazing in ecstasy on a vision of an- 
gels. Some months after, it was purchased in 
New York by a picture-dealer for two hundred 
and fifty dollars and handed over to the Spanish 
consul. It is now again in place, so perfectly re- 
stored that no one would ever fancy that it had 
gone on so fantastic a journey. * Near him is a 
bunch of lilies, placed in a vase, and so true to 
nature, that birds (perhaps the doves we had no- 
ticed flying among the arches) are said to have 
come and pecked at them.' ^ 

An idea of the wealth of this cathedral may be 
gathered from a few statistics concerning it.^ 

^ Tollemache, Spanish Towns and Spanish Pictures ^ p. 
182. 
1 De Amicis, Spagna, pp. 336, 337. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 63 

Twenty thousand pounds of wax tapers were an- 
nually consumed in its illumination; every day 
five hundred masses were said at its eighty al- 
tars j and eighteen thousand quarts of wine were 
used in the sacraments. The canons were served 
like kings, and drove to church in splendid car- 
riages drawn by prancing horses ; while they cel- 
ebrated mass, clerks fanned them with jeweled 
fans, — a privilege that has been preserved down 
to the present time ; and the pomp of the cere- 
monies was little, if at all, behind that of the 
Holy City itself. 

The most singular thing about the whole foun- 
dation, however, is the sacred Dance of the Six, 
which takes place in the church every evening 
about dark, for a week, during the Corpus Dom- 
ini feast. The church is dark; only the High 
Chapel is lighted ; a throng of women on their 
knees crowd the space between the chapel and 
the choir. Priests sit on each side of the altar ; 
on the steps in front a carpet is spread ; two 
files of boys, from ten to twelve years old, clad 
like Spanish cavaliers of the Middle Ages, with 
plumed caps and white trousers, are drawn up 
before the altar, one behind the other. At a sig- 
nal given by the priest, mysterious music of vio- 
lins floats softly along the gigantic aisles and 
sends a thrill through the profound stillness of 
the church, and the two files of boys move in a 



164 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

quadrille step, divide, interlace, fall apart, unite 
again, with a thousand graceful turns ; then sud- 
denly the whole band break out into a gentle 
and harmonious chant, reverberating through the 
air like a choir of angels ; then they dance again, 
accompanied by drums and chants. It is impos- 
sible to describe the effect of this strange cere- 
mony, — the silence, mystery, and melody of this 
dance. Two centuries ago, says the account,^ an 
archbishop of Seville tried to stop what he con- 
sidered a piece of irreverence ; but a tumult 
arose : the people clamored ; the canons roared ; 
the archbishop appealed to the pope. The pope, 
full of curiosity, desired to witness the dance with 
his own eyes, in order to judge of its impropri- 
ety. The boys, clad as cavaliers, were conducted 
to Rome, received at the Vatican, and made to 
dance and sing before his holiness. The pope 
laughed, refused his disapprobation, and decreed 
that the boys should continue the ceremony until 
the costumes they w^ore should be worn out ; 
after which the ceremony should be considered 
abolished. Archbishop and canons doubtless 
laughed too, for they annually renewed a part of 
the garments which, as a matter of course, never 
wore out, and never will. 

There is a sacristy full of the inimitable can- 
vases of Murillo, where the painter's genius 

^ De Amicis, Spagita, p. 33.8. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 165 

breathes on wall and altar with a true Andalusian 
pomp. Jewels without number in gold, silver, 
and precious stones, of rare workmanship and 
great age, are treasured here ; the rich vestments 
belonging to the clergy are kept in chests of 
drawers ; and various much reverenced relics are 
now and then displayed to the faithful. The cir- 
cular chapter room, built in the Ionic and Doric 
styles, and full of fine works by Murillo, Cespedes, 
and Pachecho, is shown to one side. There is 
a sixteenth century monument in the church, 
before which one hundred and fourteen lamps 
(eighty-two of them silver) and four hundred and 
fifty-three tapers burn on special occasions, mak- 
ing a marvelous scene. The dainty jeweler's 
work, the rare Flemish glass, the profusion of 
carving and statuary, the beautiful retablos, and 
the vast proportions of this cathedral make it 
perhaps the most elaborate church ever built, the 
most harmonious and impressive pile in Spain. 
A single one of the church articles is enriched 
with twelve hundred diamonds. The wealth of 
ages has poured into its precincts, and all has 
been received and welcomed. If there is noth- 
ing here to make one's 'very feet move metri- 
cally,' as old Fuller says of Westminster Abbey, 
there is much that throws a profound spell over 
the imagination, and stirs the deepest and sweet- 
est channels of the heart. A beautiful court- 



1 66 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 



^ 



yard, with Arabic portal, and a group of mighty 
orange-trees, opens from the cathedral door, and 
admits you to the delightful sunlight and per- 
fume, amid which the Giralda lifts its pinnacle 
in gray and gold. It is a work — a muezzin- 
tower — of the Arabs. What can one liken it 
to except to a gigantic spike of golden wheat 
flashing into the air for twenty-five miles around ? 
There are lovely arabesques, balconies, and fres- 
coes outside : a cluster of superb bells hangs in 
the belfry, to which you ascend partly by in- 
clined planes, partly by steps, — and the first 
bell-clock put up in Spain is there. A man on 
horseback might ride almost to the top. Faith, 
picturesquely on tiptoe, whirls 'with every change 
of wind from her perch on the bronze globe ; 
hence the name Giralda^ weather-cock. 

'What keeps you here?' asked the sacristan 
of Murillo one day, whom he found time and 
again in absorbed contemplation before the De- 
scent from the Cross, of Campana. * I am waiting 
till those holy men have finished their task,' said 
the painter, pointing to the figures of Joseph and 
Nicodemus, who are engaged in taking Christ 
down from the cross. Murillo's epitaph — * Vive 
moriturus ' — is not quite so striking as Wren's in 
St. Paul's, — ' Si vis monumentum^ cii-cumspice^^ — 
but it is full of meaning. There is an old hospital 
in Seville which is enriched with the creations of 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 67 

his pencil : perhaps the finest Murillos in the 
world are in the Seville Museum, if we except 
the unrivaled collection at Madrid. I was taken 
to see the humble room where he died, and found 
— a bright group of Spanish women at work. 
We were received with grave courtesy, and a 
glance at the inscription commemorating his 
death explained to them the purpose of our visit. 
A pretty little square outside, all intense sun- 
shine, acacia-trees, and seclusion, bears his name. 
No little astonishment is created by one's now 
and then passing beneath the arches of a stupen- 
dous aqueduct which gallops over a part of the 
town rough-shod, and has been doing so since the 
time of the Romans. To see one of those great 
vanishing lines of arches tapering off into the 
distance, and jumping one house after another as 
they approach a town, is one of the most pictur- 
esque sights in the world. What exquisite bits of 
looped sunlight and landscape flash through the 
arches of Nero's aqueduct at Rome ! and how the 
grand lines of the aqueduct of Alexander Severus 
lift themselves over the tawny shoulders of the 
pagna, and form a long-seried gallery of lovely 
pictures ! Here at Seville the town itself seems 
puny in the presence of this great work, as it 
does still more at the thought that Trajan, Ha- 
drian, and Theodosius came from a little village 
in the neighborhood. It is hard to think that 



1 68 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

this massive yellow structure has a silver tor- 
rent at its heart, — an inextinguishable column, 
driven by its own silvery force into the very heart 
of the old town, — a pure flood of precious water 
distilled out of these maroon hills, and afford- 
ing never-failing refreshment to the townspeople. 
One would like to know how many of the four- 
and-twenty thousand Spanish proverbs collected 
by Juan de Yriate apply to water. 

A fine bridge crosses the Guadalquivir at Se- 
ville, and from the number of donkeys that make 
it a thoroughfare, the famous Pons Asinorum 
would be no inapplicable name. It connects 
Seville with Triana (a corruption of Trajana), its 
gypsy quarter. Here, if anywhere, would be the 
place to find out whether it is true that the gypsy 
muleteers pour quicksilver down the ears of their 
donkeys to quicken their pace ! I am sure, if I 
had known the fact at the time, I should have 
laid in a supply of the article. The dogged de- 
termination of these beasts has filled the Spanish 
language with picturesque oaths, and enriched it 
with many a saw. Couplets innumerable cele- 
brate the virtues and vices of the faithful burro, 
friend in life, and companion in death of the 
wandering peddler. It is the only thing in Spain 
that seems to have ears, — for surely waiters and 
chambennaids have none. The squalor of Triana 
and the long columns of twinkling asses' ears 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 69 

did not leave a favorable impression ; but the 
cheerful beauty of the river, with its sail-boats 
and steamships, the animated quai, the long 
reaches of glassy water, and the great heaps of 
juicy sandias, — the water-melon of Andalusia, 
— gave an element of charm, to counteract the 
unfavorable impression. 

One of the funniest of experiences is to take a 
turn through the vast tobacco manufactory of Se- 
ville. The building is nearly as long as the 
Great Eastern, and is a hundred feet broader 
than St. Peter's. Here is the source and centre 
of the everlasting fumes of Spain ; five thousand 
women are at the bottom of it, who work here, 
one might say, day and night, to keep their lords 
and masters in something to do. They are paid 
by the number of cigars and cigarettes they make, 
and form a very distinct guild in themselves, — 
piquant, saucy, sparkling-eyed creatures, in all 
stages of dress and undress (the weather was 
hot). De Amicis, in his book on Spain, ^ gives a 
charming account — for Italian readers — of his 
visit to the factory. What struck me most was the 
nastiness of the whole thing, — women, tobacco, 
babies, paste, lunch-baskets, cast-off clothes, per- 
spiration, and impurity of every sort mixed in 
inextricable confusion. It made no difference 
whether they were married or not, — all the 
1 De Amicis, Spagtia. Firenze, 1878. 



I/O SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

women seemed to have babies : all rocked them 
with their feet, and made cigars at the same time. 
The walls were lined with unmentionable gar- 
ments, hung up till their owners became their oc- 
cupants later in the evening, when they depart 
peacefully to their homes. It really requires a 
great deal of moral and physical courage to walk 
through this gallery of temptations. A tobacco- 
phobe is safe : but woe to the man that follows 
Charles Lamb. If his imagination be active, let 
him keep out of this International Exhibition 
of low-necks and short sleeves. The great build- 
ing is as strong as a fortress ; there are no less 
than twenty-eight courts within it ; and it has 
stood a siege. Tobacco manufacture is two hun- 
dred and fifty years old in Seville : even while 
the very Pilgrim Fathers were starting on their 
western mission the abandoned Sevillians were 
beginning to manufacture the weed. One of 
these nimble-fingered women can, I was told, 
make a hundred (?) packs of cigarettes in a day. 
They smoke with the utmost sangfroid^ and there 
is a great ebb and flow of conversation all the 
time. Marty were asleep, resting their heads on 
their naked arms, and supporting these on the 
paste-beslimed tables in front of them. The 
babies were as guilelessly unclad as any cherub 
of Correggio. 

The great literary glory of Seville is, or was 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I/I 

a few years ago, a lady. Caecilia Bohl, author 
of the numerous novels which pass under the 
name Fernaii Caballero, is justly celebrated. Her 
books have been translated into nearly all the 
languages of Europe, and are known in this coun- 
try. They are admirable pictures of Andalusian 
manners, and abound in faithful description, 
warmth of feeling, grace, and intense religious 
fervor. There is very great beauty in the sweet 
spirit of Christian charity which pervades all her 
works, and it has been well said that Fernan Ca- 
ballero would die for her faith with the strength 
and serenity of Loyola. Augustus Hare ^ pays a 
graceful tribute to Hhe inexhaustible wealth of 
beautiful word-pictures which may be enjoyed in 
the stories of Fernan Caballero, which collect so 
much, and reveal so much, and teach so much, 
that it is scarcely possible sufficiently to express 
one's obligation to them.' Many of her stories 
have exquisite pathos : they are invaluable to the 
student of folk-lore, village superstitions, and 
quaint observances of the olden time. There are 
stories of hers in which the conversation for 
whole pages is carried on in proverbs, proverbs 
so intimately interwoven with the very woof of 
Spanish life that they cannot be got rid of, and 
fall every moment from the lips of the people, so 
that one can believe — if one cannot read — the 

1 Wanderijigs in Spain. London, 1873. 



I J 2 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

three epistles of Blasco de Garay, which are said 
to be composed of a continuous narrative of one 
thousand proverbs. Her special study has been 
to illustrate every phase and aspect of popu- 
lar life and manners : her industry in gathering 
and utilizing material has been unexampled : the 
Grimms themselves could hardly excel her in 
this respect. She repels with indignation, in one 
of her prefaces,^ the notion that the homely cus 
tom and immemorial habit of a people are mat- 
ters to be held in contempt. She delights in col- 
- lecting the beautiful Christmas customs and car- 
ols of her country, the couplets and refrains, the 
catches and snatches of popular poetry that have 
gathered about the holy festivals of the Church : 
and all these are skillfully introduced into her 
stories, and made to yield a rich pleasure to the 
reader. 'What charming pictures,' she says, 
' might we have now of Gallicia with its heavenly 
scenery, its handsome race, and its picturesque 
costume, now of Valencia the garden, and its 
light and airy inhabitants ; of grave and solemn 
Senora Castile ; of Catalonia, Aragon, gay Na- 
varre, — in a word, of all ; for what province is 
there that is devoid of beauties, of peculiar phys- 
iognomy, of special character and traditions, that 
its children do not love, that its poets do not feel 

1 CiLadros de los Costiimh'es Populares Andaluces. Se- 
villa, 1852. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I 73 

and sing of ? ' She sets to work, therefore, with 
a love that is real genius, to do what she can to- 
ward making her countrymen know their own 
country, and indirectly she has done a great serv- 
ice to foreigners. In Seville, s.he is venerated 
as a saint. She was, I believe, born there, mar- 
ried very young, and was three times a widow. 
Her last husband was Spanish ambassador to 
London : he committed suicide, I think, and his 
wife mourned for him as long as she lived. 
When Amicis visited her she was nearly seventy, 
and enjoyed a reputation for much beauty. Her 
father, a man of great culture and benevolence, 
— to which she pays a feeling tribute in one of 
her books, — instructed her in various languages : 
she was said to be a profound Latin scholar, and 
spoke Italian, German, and French to perfec- 
tion. She ceased to write in her old age, though 
tempted by very large offers. An insatiable 
reader, still she was always knitting or embroi- 
dering, for she made it a ruling principle of her 
life that nothing should interfere with her ordi- 
nary duties. Without children, she lived in great 
seclusion, and gave up the greater part of her 
house to an indigent family, while much of her 
means was spent in alms. A curious trait of her 
character was her devotion to animals : she had 
a houseful of canaries, cats, and dogs ; and her 
sensibility was so great that she could not bear 



1 74 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

to ride in a carriage for fear she might see a 
blow given to the horse. At one time she was 
in high favor with the Montpensiers, who treated 
her with distinction : the most honorable fami- 
lies in Seville vied with each other in showing 
her attention ; but toward the end of her life she 
lived entirely with her books, and a few female 
friends.-^ 

It speaks well for the place that there are so 
many establishments for public instruction and 
so many scientific and literary societies. There 
is a university of Seville which, after many vicis- 
situdes, survives creditably to-day, and furnishes 
instruction in numerous branches. An institu- 
tion for secondary instruction is situated in Love 
of God Street, not to mention others of less note. 
There are numerous archives belonging to the 
mayoralty, the captain-generalcy, the cathedral 
chapter, and the palaces of the ancient nobility, 
which are of great interest and value. The mag- 
nificent archives of the Indies, overflowing with 
documents pertaining to the discoveries and con- 
quests of Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, 
and others, have been concentrated here in the 
Lonja or exchange. The jewel of the collection 
is a petition in the handwriting of Cervantes 
praying the king to appoint him to one of four 
vacancies which had occurred at the time. 

Seville is very rich in libraries too, both public 
^ Vid. De Amicis, Spagna^ p. 364. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. i;5 

and private. There are fifteen besides the fa- 
mous Columbine Library, the University Library, 
and the remarkable private collection of Senor 
de Alava. The son of the great Columbus was a 
sort of Pestalozzi in his way ; he had a passion 
for founding academies, libraries, and schools, 
which would have done immense good had he 
lived to carry out his plans. At his death he 
bequeathed his twenty thousand volumes to the 
cathedral, and they now rest under the shadow 
of the Giralda tower, that work of grace planned 
by Gaver, the inventor of algebra. The beauti- 
ful face of the old navigator, more like a saint's 
than a sailors, — hangs on the w^all and casts a 
sweet and serious tenderness over the ancient 
library. Curious old vellum-bound books, parch- 
ments, illuminated works, and rare manuscripts, 
peer out from behind the glass doors where they 
repose in everlasting sleep, in superb mahogany 
and cedar-lined cradles. What a curious light 
does his epitaph throw on Fernando Columbus's 
character ! The Latin distichs read as follows : 
' What availeth my having bathed the whole uni- 
verse in my sweat, having traversed three times 
the New World discovered by my father, having 
embellished the shores of the tranquil Baetis and 
preferred my simple tastes to wealth, to gather 
around thee the divinities of Castaly's Fount and 
offer thee the treasures accumulated of old by 



176 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Ptolemy ; if thou, passing this stone in silence, 
givest not even a salutation to my father nor a 
fleeting remembrance to me ? ' 

Nowhere, however, is that mysterious perfume 
of the East which Victor Hugo has translated 
into Les Orientales, more potently felt than in the 
Alcazar of Seville. Even Hans Andersen,^ who 
was so absorbed in versifying and balladizing on 
what he saw in Spain that he saw nothing, breaks 
off his lyrical intermezzos to describe this spark- 
ling palace of the houris. Here, if anywhere, 
the sun-like eyes, the dawn-like smile, and the 
paradise of love, ascribed by an old Spanish 
verse to the women of Malaga, — 

* Una muger malaguena 
Tiene en sus ojos un sol, 
En su sonrisa la aurora 
Y un paraiso en su amor,' — 

might be imagined peeping through the faint 
glooms of this many-chambered palace. In some 
respects it is more beautiful than the Alhambra 
and quite as ancient, but the tender melancholy 
of the Granada palace is missed in this most gor- 
geous structure. For hundreds of years it was 
worked on by Moorish and Spanish kings, each 
adding a court or a wall or a tower, until it stood 
forth a miracle of beauty and voluptuousness. 
Its walls sing with colors, run wild with intricate 
1 Hans Andersen, I Spanien. Kjobenhavn, 1878. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. I J J 

Moorish ornamentation. One of its courts — 
the Court of Damsels — is, perhaps, the most ex- 
quisite thing in Spain. Intense sunlight plays 
upon its fifty marble columns, its trophies and 
escutcheons, its lovely cabinets, azulejo-\A^^ and 
mosaics : intense silence reigns amid the pillars, 
light and silent as an exhalation. The whole 
fantastic tradition of Moorish architecture seems 
here followed out to its utmost strangeness : no 
minarets, no fountains, no pomegranate belfries 
upheld by pillarets dainty as spun glass : simply 
a cloister, rimmed in on all sides by delicious 
arches, with pillars dropping like cobwebs to the 
ground ; then another story built on this, with 
pilasters, pointed Byzantine leaves, capricious 
combination of Arabic, Gothic, and plate work, 
infinitely delicate in execution. The airiest al- 
hamies are perceived on one side, with their mi- 
nutely worked blinds and translucent spaces, and 
on another there are communications with the 
seraglio. The lucent, limpid marble of many of 
the palace floors, — the tiled floors of others, — 
the elegance of the curves, the richness of the 
decoration, the blaze of color and gold kindled 
over these half-dawning walls, — no language can 
describe. Here, too, there is a Hall of Ambas- 
sadors, filled with delicate columns and arches, 
Arabic curves, friezes, windows in beautiful se- 
ries, geometric designs, walls luxuriously illu- 



12 



1 78 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

mined with colors and gold, open balconies : over 
all there is a spherical cupola, with decorations 
in star-work, designed to be filled with painted 
glass, and to stain the white or golden light a 
thousand dyes, as it fell on the groups below. 
Cufic inscriptions and Koranic verses ribbon the 
walls, and there is great intricacy of interlaced 
leaves, pine-cones, palms, and shells, through 
which, like long delicate serpents, twine fantastic, 
geometric threads ; then these gather about a por- 
tal or a window, and wreathe and twine and crin- 
kle into a delightful frame-work. The purest fancy 
displays itself everywhere in this building. The 
Court of the Munecas is one of the loveliest ex- 
amples of Moslem art, — an oblong, filled with 
great and small arches, as slender-curved as the 
spiral of a shell. Over the whole palace the or- 
namentation forms a dissolving view : constant 
transformations take place, — Protean combina- 
tions and re-combinations ; human toil pervaded 
by dreams and dainty imaginings, wavelets of 
strange influences, half rhythms in ductile stone, 
precious recollections of half evolved reveries, — 
form the strange aliment of these stranger archi- 
tects. The whole thing is an emblem, an alle- 
gory, a piece of luminous soothsaying by the art- 
ists of the East, ' a silence between the flute and 
the drum ' into which Moorish fancy has crept, 
filling the whole with Koranic passion and simili- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 79 

tude. The palace is a confused symbolism, a 
tangled ratiocination in color and stone, a Dan- 
tesque legend interpreted by infidels. The very 
wealth of mosaics, inscriptions, columns, capitals, 
tile-work, has, like the overflowing notes of some 
commentator, overlaid and confused the text. 
The beautiful simplicity of the Egyytian, Syrian, 
and Persian palace-structures has here been in- 
vaded by a torrent of imagery : the Alcazar is a 
carved and painted metaphor. To me, it is de- 
lightful to walk in, whatever it may be to special- 
ists of purer taste. Secret, sensuous Araby — 
desire in its labyrinthine windings — pleasure 
near to tears — pain embalmed in perfect phrases 
— grace that coils about life like a passion-flower, 
and gives the last light to its dying eyes : such is 
the Alcazar. 

I think there is nothing at Granada quite so 
lovely as the Alcazar garden : to walk in it is to 
walk in other centuries. Here you may see in 
perfection box and myrtle cut into coats of arms, 
initials, imperial eagles, fleur-de-lis^ crowns, and 
maps ; lemon, jasmine, rose-bays, and orange 
clustering and clustered : a garden, the whole of 
whose graveled walks, by an admirable system 
of water-works, can be put under water, when up 
spring, as if by magic, isles of honeysuckle and 
magnolia, splendid clumps of daphne, water-girt, 
tiny Ithacas and Islands of the Blest, amid the 



I 80 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

surrounding bloom. Great urns lift their basins 
out of the green ; rollicking fountains play ; flakes 
of lemon-blossom snow the ground ; and every 
sweet-smelling herb exhales under this potent 
heat and moisture. 

All this beauty, however, is stained with blood ; 
a Newgate Calendar might almost be compiled 
out of the archives of the Alcazar. But I will 
not go into the amours and ferocities of Don 
Pedro the Cruel and the Dona Padilla : the task 
would be irksome. Dona Padilla — an ances- 
tress of Bloody Mary — lies in the neighboring 
cathedral, and nothing remains of her but her 
gentle memory and beautiful eyes. Don Pedro 
is the ogre of Spanish annals, and peeps out of 
many a legend with the lineaments of Blue Beard. 
The singular beauty with which such wretches 
knew how to surround themselves, — the palaces, 
gardens, and seraglios in which they knew how 
to enshrine their voluptuousness, — the elegance 
and harmony of everything to which they laid 
their hand, — form a chapter of curiosities not 
yet explained by the student of psychology. 

Another visit of great interest may be paid to 
the House of Pilate, — a structure of the six- 
teenth century, built by the Marquises of Tarifa, 
in imitation of the imaginary house of Pilate at 
Jerusalem. Imaginary or not, nothing could be 
more rich than this mass of wavy sculpture, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 8 \ 

fringed arabesques, painted glass, and precious 
marbles. The principal court, in its dazzling 
whiteness and daintiness, is like a crystallization 
of frost, and nothing can surpass the loveliness 
of the transformations it undergoes as you look 
on the airy Saracenic architecture through the 
many-colored glass of the rooms contiguous. A 
grand staircase, full of emblems, traceries, and 
legends, crowned by a half orange dome, admits 
you to the apartments above : but the whole is 
one of those low, gorgeous, Oriental piles, whose 
chief luxury is in their ground-floor apartments ; 
and whose spaciousness, absence of toilsome as- 
cents, and proximity to gardens, more perfectly 
reveal the poetry and lassitude of the East than 
the most heaven-climbing Arabian towers. Over 
the whole palace there is the finish of a Pompa- 
dour fan : magnifying-glasses are almost neces- 
sary to trace out the flowing continuity of orna- 
mentation which has passed over these walls. It 
is a legend of the Holy Land, beautified by the 
most reverent Spanish art. 

Famous stories, too, are told of the magnifi- 
cence of its owners, the poets and painters they 
entertained, and the discussions in art and sci- 
ence which took place there in Cervantes' time. 
It would be hard to find a better type of the 
semi-oriental Andalusian life than the Casa de 
Pilatos. 



1 82 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

I cannot enter into descriptions of the many 
fine palaces belonging to wealthy noblemen ; of 
San Telmo \ of the Tower of Gold (where the 
first gold brought from America was deposited) 
and the Tower of Silver ; of the environs of Se- 
ville ; the gay and fashionable streets j the gates 
of the city \ the great bull-ring ; the theatres, 
private collections, and gypsy balls. The Street 
of Serpents is Seville epitomized, — hung with 
awnings, full of bright shops, crowded with silent 
women and sauntering men, — short and vivid as 
Andalusian life itself, and with an intensity of 
local coloring such as hardly any other street in 
the town possesses. Since the thirteenth cent- 
ury Seville has been celebrated for its fairs, its 
religious pilgrimages, its brotherhoods and proces- 
sions, and its numerous vigils. Holy Week here 
is like one of the vast canvases of the Doge's Pal- 
ace reanimated, and many curious customs ac- 
company the religious celebrations of that week : 
the door of the Giralda tower on Palm Sunday 
is struck with a cross to commemorate Christ's 
opening of the doors of heaven ; a veil is rent 
amid loud thunders on Holy Wednesday; the 
burial of Christ takes place in magnificent pomp ; 
there is blessing of baptismal fonts. Paschal ta- 
pers, oil, etc. 

A trait rather characteristic of the place is 
that one of the principal theatres is built on the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 1 83 

site of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost. The 
0-shaped bull-ring — a graded amphitheatre 
within — has fourteen thousand seats, and the 
people remark with pride that the royal person- 
ages who have assisted at fwtcciones here were 
Charles IV., Ferdinand VII., the Dukes of Mont- 
pensier, Isabel II. (said to be a passionate lover 
of bull-fighting), and Alfonso XII. 

A scrap from the Danish of Hans Andersen ^ 
will add another association to Seville — the Leg- 
end of Don Juan : ' Don Juan Tenorio,' says the 
legend, *was a young, life-loving Seville noble- 
man, proud, intellectual, and frank to excess ; 
he seduced the daughter of the commandant, 
"killed the father, and sank into an abyss of un- 
godliness.' Another Spanish legend names him 
Don Juan de Marana, and calls him one of the 
wealthiest noblemen of Seville, who led a gay, 
wild life, passed his nights in bacchanalian or- 
gies, and, in his excessive wantonness, even bade 
the Giralda weather-cock (the figure of Faith) 
come down from the tower and visit him one 
night, and she moved her mighty copper wings, 
that whistled in the air, and came down with 
heavy feet, like those which were afterward given 
the marble commandant. But one midnight 
when he was going home through the desolate, 
lonesome streets, he heard music all of a sud- 
1 I Spanien^ p. 166. 



184 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

den, long-drawn wailing tones ; he saw shine 
of torches ; a mighty funeral procession ap- 
proached ; a corpse lay in silver and silk on the 
open bier. ^ Who is being buried to-night ? ' 
asked he, and the answer rang : ^ Don Juan de 
Marana ! ' The shroud was lifted aside — and 
Don Juan saw his own form dead and stark on 
the bier. A deadly fear shot through him, he 
fainted, and the next day he gave all his wealth 
to the monastery of La Caridad, entered the or- 
der himself, and became one of its most exem- 
plary members. 

' The Spanish poet Tirso de Molina was the 
first who dramatized the legend and wrote The 
Seducer of Seville, or the Stone Guest. The 
name of Don Juan Tenorio was retained though 
the family was still living. The piece called 
forth many imitators in France and Italy, but 
Moliere gave it the finishing touch ; then it was 
re-written as a text for Mozart's Don Giovanni, 
whose immortal music carries the legend of Don 
Juan down the ages and generations. Already 
in Tirso we see the dramatic conclusion as we 
now know it. The commandant's marble form 
comes from the grave ; knocking is heard ; the 
servant hesitates to open the door ; Don Juan 
seizes a silver lamp and goes to the door him- 
self and lights the Stone Guest in, who, with 
heavy marble tread enters the dining-room. The 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 85 

corpse is regaled with ice, merry songs and pro- 
fane questions about the other world. On his 
departure he invites Don Juan the next night to 
supper in the mortuary chapel. At the precise 
hour Don Juan meets his frightful host ; a Sa- 
tanic meal has been prepared, — " scorpions and 
serpents;" "the wine is gall." The Stone Guest's 
hand-shake initiates the seducer into the flames 
of hell. Don Juan sinks down into the earth 
with the corpse. The horrified servant creeps 
on all fours to the foreground of the stage, where 
he breaks out : " Great God ! " ' etc. 

In the La Caridad Church, where Don Juan 
Tenorio once intoned pious hymns with the other 
monks and prayed for his own oppressed soul, 
his picture is seen on the wall ; passion and pen- 
itence speak from every feature ; a red cross 
glitters on his black habit. Under his picture 
hangs the sword with which he slew the com- 
mandant Don Gonzalo. 

Perhaps the only addition to be made to this 
account is that Hans Andersen could never have 
read Moliere's Festin de Pierre ; a more stupid 
and soulless composition it would be difficult to 
find. 

Another interesting association admits you to 
another glimpse of musical life : 

' Numero quindici 
A mano manca ! * 



1 86 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

This is the number of the Barber of Seville, whom 
Rossini has so delightfully embalmed and whose 
gayety is so associated with the rippling har- 
monies of Mozart's Figaro. Beaumarchais' verse', 
too, gives him to us genially, and there is no lack 
of allusion elsewhere in literature. Over the 
door may be seen the brass basin, with a large 
slice cut out on one side for the thumb, which is 
the sign of the Spanish and Portuguese barbers, 
apropos of whom John Latouche tells a good 
story : ^ * The Portuguese, like the Spaniard, is 
never full dressed unless he is well shaved, and, 
unlike the celebrated De Cosse, Duke of Brissac, 
he never shaves himself ; and, in truth, I would 
not undertake to say that the admirable motive 
which drove the aforesaid peer to his daily task 
would, under any circumstances of high rank or 
idleness, have similar sway with the lazy Penin- 
sula. " Timoleon de Cosse,'' the French noble 
was often heard to soliloquize of a morning, with 
the open razor in his hand : " God has made 
thee a gentleman, and the king has made thee 
a duke. It is, nevertheless, right and fit that 
thou shouldst have something to do j therefore 
thou shalt shave thyself." ' 

The reader will excuse me from attempting an 
analysis of the Murillo gallery in Seville. A 
painter reduced to his chemical elements is no 
1 Travels in Portugal. London, 1878. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 8/ 

part of my plan, and nothing can be drearier 
than the usual dish of art criticism found in 
books of travel. I shall be original, therefore, in 
leaving out this well-thumbed gallery and refer 
the reader himself to the place. Before each 
picture there sits a worshiping and adoring art- 
ist engaged in translating into his own daub the 
rare tints and tenderness of the originals. There 
they sit, day after day, hoping that inspiration 
will come and brush its ethereal wings across 
their palettes ; hopeless Hindoos clasping the 
sacred lotus-flower till their arm withers to a 
stick. No more melancholy exhibition is to be 
found than a peep over the shoulder of the art- 
ist who is engaged in the work of form and color 
translation. In the various galleries of Europe 
you see the divinest masterpieces in all imagin- 
able states of composition and decomposition as 
you move from one copyist to another and glance 
from their easels to the picture on the wall. 
Here in Seville smoking goes on gayly in the 
picture-rooms — which accounts probably for the 
dinginess of the copies made. A very striking 
similarity exists between Murillo's female types 
and the Spanish women of to-day. The only dif- 
ference is in the golden hair now somewhat rare 
in the Peninsula, but so abundantly introduced 
by the painter into his pictures. The fine An- 
dalusian type — the type of aquiline noses, small 



1 88 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

limbs, large, lambent black eyes, hair like Mil- 
ton's * raven down of darkness,' and serpent-like 
grace in the women, — smiles from his canvases 
quite unchanged and might be verified any night 
at the Zarzuela. Murillo was a conscientious de- 
tail worker, in spite of the depreciation now cast 
upon him as a poor draughtsman. I once heard 
an artist say that he always felt as if Murillo's 
women had all sorts of diseases ! 

To show the painter's fidelity to details, the 
following instance — interwoven by Fernan Cab- 
allero into one of her stories ^ — may be given. 
Murillo painted a picture of the patron saints 
of Seville, Santas Justa and Rufina, who were 
earthenware-makers. At their feet lie specimens 
of their wares so perfectly painted that they re- 
semble in every stroke the earthenware of to- 
day. 

The immutability of earthenware types is re- 
markably illustrated by the present shapes found 
in the great Triana manufactory of Seville. The 
objects made to-day are exactly like those of 
three hundred years ago as seen in Murillo's pict- 
ure. There is historic evidence to prove that 
the manufactory had existed for thirteen hun- 
dred years before his time, and is far older than 
the famous manufactories of Sevres, Saxony, St. 
Petersburg, La Granja, Delft, and Chelsea. So 
1 El Ex Voto, p. 263. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 89 

that there is truth as well as humor in the anec- 
dote of Marshal Soult, who, on his entry into 
Seville, passing before a heap of what the Span- 
ish call 'extremely domestic products of the 
Triana works,' said, in imitation of the Little 
Corporal: ' Soldiers of France ! sixteen centuries 
are looking down at you ! ' 

My stay at Seville was considerably enlivened 
by a guide who, far more voluble with legs than 
with tongue, walked me all over the place, lost 
himself and me several times in the tangle of 
streets, plunged into churches regardless of si- 
esta-time, and emerged at palaces and cathedrals 
in a manner (topographically) astounding. I see 
the poor fellow now, dissolved in perspiration, 
which seemed to unglue the terminations of his 
French verbs and nouns, trying in a sort of 
wild waddle, to guide his employer, wiping his 
streaming countenance, darting into little Span- 
ish drinking-shops for a gaziosa^ or dropping his 
mouth benignantly to a pump-spigot, and letting 
the cool stream dart (apparently) down to the 
very tips of his toes. He was that singular phe- 
nomenon, a silent guide. He volunteered little 
information and maintained a Pythagorean reti- 
cence, not even saying * beans ' once. He was 
gray all over, and wore a threadbare gray suit 
whose shabby gentility had a touch of pathos in 
it. A shovel-hat surmounted a head — or rather, 



I go SPAIN IN PROFILE. 



^ 



I should say, a cheek — in which two little gray- 
eyes blinked out at the passing world, and I 
think he twirled a cane and had a pair of toes 
that turned most delightfully inward. 

With this apparition at my heels I went the 
rounds of Seville, now in a carriage and now 
a-foot, pursued rather than led by my indefatiga- 
ble mentor, whose feet were the only part of him 
that expatiated, and who might have been under 
the vow of eternal silence for all evidence that he 
gave to the contrary. In the cathedral his pres- 
ence saved me from the English sparrows that 
dart out from behind every pillar and wage bale- 
ful war on the Peregrines of that nationality. A 
kick is the only conjury to which some of them 
will yield. The raised eye-brow, or the sign of 
the Evil Eye, said to be so efficacious in Italy, 
are of no avail with the hankering hidalgo. As 
it was, we flitted from chapel to chapel, and crypt 
to choir, ^ sweet as summer,' undisturbed by the 
acrimonious tongues of the church guides. The 
fair and mighty twilight of that great cathedral 
will dwell with me, associated with the lifted 
lodestone of its noble tower, the centuried sun- 
light of the Court of Oranges, the great Mudejar 
Gate, and the pealing sweetness of the high-hung 
bells. ~ 




X. 

Wir kommen erst aus Spanlen zuriick, 
Dem schonen Land des Weins und der Gesange. 

Fausti 2206. 

A PEEP into old Cordova is not the least agree- 
able of one's experiences among the Spanish cit- 
ies. Age, mellowness, tranquillity are its charac- 
teristics ; and for all the life it shows it might in 
Castelar's phrase, be compared to one of those 
' Homeric battles where all the combatants, 
crowned with laurel, have died on their chiseled 
shields.' The town, crowned with laurel, as it 
doubtless is, is long since dead, and though there 
are no chiseled shields to protect or support it 
in its desolation, there are two or three relics 
from the general wreck which are most worthy of 
a glance. 

Nowhere is Andalusian life seen on a more 
petite scale. Cordova is a honey-comb of the 
tiniest habitations, minute in every sense. Im- 
agine a huge bride-cake cut into rings, with an 
endless meander of intersecting streets and al- 
leys : each street and alley filled with miniature 
dwellings, low, flat, whitewashed, and window- 



192 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

less ; each plazuela, a hive of human beings 
issuing from these dwellings ; each dwelling a 
sort of raindrop under a microscope, seething 
with animalcule life ; and over the whole, such 
icing as an Andalusian sun can give as it ric- 
ochets from all this whitened surface ; such is 
Cordova. If you are interested in such matters, 
you may see the women with toothpicks in their 
mouths all day long, or eating fish with their fin- 
gers, or cultivating the natural affections and 
family life, for which the Spanish women are so 
celebrated, or showing that righteous abhorrence 
of ' select boarding-schools ' exhibited so com- 
ically throughout the Peninsula. As for intrust- 
ing their children to such places, immediate invo- 
cation to Heaven and all its saints would take 
place the moment it might be mentioned. Cor- 
dova is just the place, however, to see the beauti- 
ful small charities in which the Spaniards abound, 
how they help each other and stand by each 
other in weal and woe ; what great respect they 
have for individuals, whatever imprecations they 
may call down upon them collectively in times of 
excitement and revolution; their * incapacity for 
either inflicting or bearing an insult;' their great 
good humor and gentleness in crowds ; and the 
magnanimity, candor, and docility that lurk be- 
neath their ferocious gesticulation. Vanity is 
the national vice, and even here, in slumberous 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 193 

Cordova, where one would think the sun had 
drunk it all up, its smoldering fires may be kicked 
open by any clumsy foot. 

It is easy to believe the Arab poet who called 
Cordova the ' pearl of the West,' a city whose 
renown was like that of Bagdad and to which 
poets, scholars, enthusiasts, and pilgrims flocked 
in thousands to drink knowledge of its immense 
libraries, to worship in its three thousand 
mosques, to wander through its thirty districts, 
and to pay court to the myrmidons of its splen- 
did khalifate. It was a source of memories and 
poesies to the poets of the East. Affluence, 
knowledge, culture were spread among the three 
thousand villages of the province. There was 
a busy and voluptuous multitude at work on its 
palaces and in its places of amusement. It was 
the third among the Andalusian cities which for 
so many centuries after the treachery of Count 
Julian governed the best part of the peninsula 
in so regal a way, and extorted, even from the in- 
tensely patriotic authors of the Romancero del 
Cid, frequent tributes of praise and acknowledg- 
ment. One half detests Seneca for making but 
a solitary mention, in all his voluminous works, 
of his birthplace. The poet of the Pharsalia was 
from Cordova ; and a constant stream of rabbin- 
ical and Aristotelian philosophers, from Averroes 
and Maimonides on, flowed from its schools. 
13 



194 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

The Guadalquivir has a noble breadth at Cor- 
dova, so that there is little difficulty in believing, 
the tale of nearly a thousand baths that formerly 
existed at the place ; while the shocking illiteracy 
of the present population is a sad commentary on 
the hundreds of thousands of volumes that once 
filled its libraries. A solitary decent inn does 
duty for the six hundred kiians of the olden times, 
and the abounding public schools where the the- 
ology, history, and poetry of the Arabians were 
expounded by poetic and impassioned teachers, 
have dwindled into a few wretched communal 
and parochial schools, richly flavored with an 
obsolete Catholicism. In Cordova you feel a 
strange geographical remoteness from the rest of 
Europe ; at all events certain habitudes of mind 
are rather violently upset after a certain degree 
of intimacy with the Orientalism all around you. 
I never had the word still so impressively thun- 
dered at me as in Cordova : a word in which all 
the meditative tranquillity, all the reserve and ret- 
icence of the cautious and contemplative East 
are concentrated. It seems as if never a passion, 
much less a revolution, had ever entered these 
enchanted gates ; nothing but a sigh, and that of 
the gentlest regret. ' Fire, sun, and health are 
the highest goods,' says the High Song in the 
Edda, in the code of rules it establishes for the 
wanderer, the guest, and the lover of home ; 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 95 

* one's own hearth is the best.' Each one of 
these pregnant blessings is written in light over 
the Cordovan doors. The town crouches be- 
tween its hills, and only here and there ventures 
to send up a timid pinnacle in token of its con- 
version to the Christian religion. One verily be- 
lieves half the people are still Mahometans at 
heart. Hence there would be no surprise in see- 
ing the Berber magnate in our day making the 
pilgrimage of the great Mosque of Cordova, seven 
times, on his knees, beating his breast and weep- 
ing that his kindred had lost so fair a possession. 
The tone of the place is elegiac : ' great Pan is 
dead,' comes floating over the sea, and startles 
the sailors. 

The approach to Cordova is in the familiar 
track of Cervantes : La Mancha, spiced with 
Quixotic recollections, is traversed by the railway 
— a province famed in spring for the vividness 
of its wayside flowers, and its great masses of 
convolvulus, blue-bells, poppies, and aloes.^ The 
country is touched off inimitably in Dore's illus- 
trations to Don Quixote, an artist who has drawn 
out into lines and shadows all the pregnant un- 
derplay of the book. The train stops at Argasa- 
milla de Alba, the very place where the knight 
was born and died, and where Cervantes himself 
was arrested and imprisoned in a house said still 
to exist. 

^ Vid. Elwes, IVtrongh Spain by Rail in 1872. 



196 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

On arriving at Cordova do not be shocked if 
you find yourself suddenly among quaintly named 
streets — ^ Jesus Crucified Street,' for example, 
or if you find yourself lodging in the * Street of 
Paradise ; ' it is as much to be expected as the 
* gate of pardon ' possessed by every church and 
through which anciently only the specially privi- 
leged could pass. It was a belief of the Moors 
that the paradise of the Koran hung over the 
Vega of Granada ] one is tempted to believe that 
the other place hangs over the pebbly streets of 
Cordova. Spenser's 

* Buskins he wore of costliest co7-dwai7i^ 

brings to mind an ancient association of the 
place. In the word was perpetuated the name 
of Cordova itself as characteristic of one of its 
chief manufactures. Leather of specially excel- 
lent quality was called cordwain (cordouan), and 
to tan and prepare it the pomegranate was 
planted through the country and the bitter rind 
of the fruit used in the processes. The * sweet 
cane from a far country,' the palm, and the dam- 
ask rose followed in its train, and stand now as 
the most enduring memorial of Moorish sway ; 
but certainly the fantastical repugnance ^ the 
Spaniards have to riding mares (!) is not of sim- 
ilar origin, for the Bedouin Arabs at least have no 

1 Vid. Thieblin, Spain and the Spaitiards, 1875. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 1 97 

such repugnance. The charm for the Evil Eye 
of the Moor is represented in nearly all Spanish 
churches by pictures of St. Christopher, whose 
image by some twist of memory or association is 
supposed to avert malign influence ; hence al- 
most the first thing you lay your eyes on in enter- 
ing the Andalusian churches is a gigantic likeness 
of the Christ-bearing Saint. A glance at his fig- 
ure insures safety for the day. The same te- 
nacity of tradition was shown by the Jews of To- 
ledo who built the rafters and beams of their 
great synagogue of the cedar of Lebanon, a wood 
said to be so bitter that no insect will touch it ; 
hence the apparent indestructibility of structures 
into which it enters. For a somewhat similar 
reason Westminster Hall is called the * cobweb- 
less hall,' because, being made of Irish oak, spi- 
ders cannot live in it. 

The merest walk in the venerable city of the 
Sierra Morena suffices to start a throng of such 
legends and souvenirs ; the whole place plays 
with the thirty colors of Charlemagne's magic 
sword. If you like you may drop in at one of 
the low long coffee-houses and taste the real Man- 
zanilla wine, — a canary-colored fluid, flavored 
with camomile blossoms ; or in the same resting- 
place of dreamy Spaniards call for some of the 
delicious twists of bread from Alcala de los Pan- 
adores (of the bakers), a village not far off, where 



198 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

there are hundreds of flour-mills supplying ha:^ 
Spain with the finest wheat-flour in the world i 
or a peep into a sinister-looking old church ma;'^ 
bring before you a sentence like this : * Whoeve ^ 
speaks to women, either in the nave or the aislef--*- 
thereby puts himself in danger of excommuniccd 
tion ; ' or, if the sacristan insists on showing yo '^" 
the thorn from the crown of thorns which hij^ 
church inevitably possesses, you may see tha-^ 
this thorn is generically and specifically different- 
from the last sacristan's, and that both are ab ' 
solutely different from the small-thorned spina 
• Christi which is found near Jericho ; or, if in the 
proper seasons, you may watch the boys spread- 
ing their limed cords to catch singing birds, with 
twittering decoys in wicker cages near by. 

Externally, like Cadiz, Cordova ^ lies white as 
new fallen snow, like a cluster of ivory palaces, 
between earth and sky/ Apparently, repelled 
by the mellow browns and grays of the Castilian 
and Catalonian cities, the people of the South 
have gone to the other extreme, and everything 
is blinding white. This love of whitew^ash is a 
distinct peculiarity of the Mediterranean coun- 
tries. It has frequently proved of great harm to 
fine works of art, churches, and palaces in Anda- 
lusia, and occasionally the total wreck by it of 
some precious mosaic or fresco-series is proudly 
commemorated by an inscription and a date. 



\ 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 



199 



hardly a whiff from any one of the seven hun- 
• Ired coal mines of the Peninsula seems ever to 

lave blackened these unspotted walls, while the 

|uicksilver, of which such marvels are told, has 
.ertainly transferred itself from the sluggish pop- 
1 lation of Spain to the mercurial neighbor over 
i he mountains. Figures brown as the Andalu- 
(jian sheep so well-known in song and story cast 
I'lickering shadows on the walls as they pass \ 

and now and then these shadows mysteriously 
disappear into the recesses of a venta, where 
there are cooling drinks made of iced barley- 
water, ground-nut milk, milk of almonds, rice, or 
white of eggs and sugar whipped together, fla- 
vored, and dried ; or there is shadow-play of 
quaint tasseled leather gaiters, of sheep-skin 
trousers, of long knives in waist-sashes, or of 
felouched sombreros and majestically draped 
capas^ as the fancifully dressed herdsmen, or the 
solemn hidalgo pass by the mirror-like walls ; or, 
af it be Pinata Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, 
a glance into a window may reveal to you the 
pretty custom the Andalusians have of ending 
the Carnival, when a jar of sweetmeats is hung 
in the centre of the parlor and everybody, blind- 
folded, strikes at the suspended dukes, until after 
much ludicrous blundering and universal laugh- 
ter, the jar comes down with a crash and there is 
a lively meMe for its contents. Or perhaps these 



200 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

shadow silhouettes may bring before you in pro 
file a member of the legislative body who, in r 
paper on the recent financial, social, and commer 
cial condition of Spain, goes back to the age o 
Julius Caesar, when he supposes the Peninsula t( 
have contained seventy-eight millions of inhab 
itants ! Or perhaps another of these admirabl 
reflectors, with a view to attracting wanderers g 
uncertain nationality, may throw into relief 
sign like this : ^ — 

HERE ReSTAURATION IS PRACTISED 
BY MEANS OF 

LARGE JOINTS 

AFTER 

THE ENGLISH PROCESS. 

Or the tricksy light may sculpture in sharp sep 
lines a wavering tableau of the buhuelo-vadiVi wP 
stands just in the angle to let the sun catch hi 
as he drops his little balls of sweetened dou^ 
into boiling olive-oil and then draws them out 
skillfully molded twists and rings. Or * tho 
exquisitely fine blades, which are required for op- 
erations on the human frame,' described by JM 
caulay, may dance to and fro in the shadow and 
operate but too effectively on the human frame. 
In short, what is there which the polished walls 
of Cordova may not reflect, as one side of the 
street lies in puissant illumination, and the other 
sleeps in ambuscaded twilight ? One sees that 

1 Byrne, Cosas de Espana^ 1 866. 



SPAIN IN FRO FILE. 20I 

^the calcareous soil of Spain, so friendly to the 
'grape, so noxious to the lungs, in its wind-blown 
ubiquity, is here put to very effective use, and 
made to yield a white torment to the eyes. Over- 
come by the general dazzlement, or fleeing from 
the ammoniated atmosphere universal in the 
Spanish cities, you ' walk into a libreria and ask 
to see the latest publications. The librero re- 
ceives you with a stare, and when you have re- 
peated your question, if he be particularly brisk 
;hat day, he lifts his still sleepy eyes, and, with- 
)ut rising, or removing the everlasting cigar from 
lis lips, slowly and gravely points to a copy of 
Don Quixote ! You shake your head, and try to 
explain that you want something of more recent 
late, when he rouses himself the second time, 
^.nd, inclining his head in the opposite direction, 
le indicates a Gil Bias I ' 

- The sun-burnt faces of the Cordovese bear lit- 
le evidence of the Andalusian custom practiced 
y the village children who, on Midsummer Eve, 
1%) out to gather field flowers, with which they 
iake a decoction to bathe their faces ' para estar 
sanos todo el afio ; ' nor is the piety of modern 
times seen to rival that of ancient, when such 
numberless votive lamps hung in such number- 
less niches at street-corners and before house- 
doors that no other lighting was required at night 
by the good Sevillanos. Piety and cleanliness are 



202 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

associated by the Koranic Moor, but not by the 
Biblical Spaniard. ^' 

I lay in Paradise Street the night of my arrival, 
in a hotel paved with white marble, along whicb^ 
every murmur rang as in a whispering gallery.* 
A fountain in a marble court-yard tinkled garru- 
lously through the night ; and wherever there was 
light it fell in muffled sheets through curtains or 
awnings, like a wasp deprived of its sting. On 
one side was a reading-room comfortably cush- 
ioned ; on another the long dining-room with 
tables covered with glass and vases of fruit and 
flowers long-drawn out ; and from the dining- 
room we could look into the kitchen, with its 
bright coppers and brasses, white-capped cook, 
and pleasant cheerfulness. I cannot say, how- 
ever, for either that night or any other I passed 
in Spain, that I exactly lay on anything even 
faintly resembling the blue satin cushion on which 
the little infantes are laid and dressed, * that their 
little altissimos may not come into too close con- 
tact with plebeian flesh and blood ; ' nay, rather, 
my experience resembled that of Victor Hugo's 
mother, who, during her residence in Madrid, de- 
scribes swarms of certain entomological speci- 
mens as coursing up and down the blue satin 
and amber silk draperies of a certain prince's 
palace in that city. Perhaps nobody but a Span- 
iard, or one who has traveled in Spain, can un- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 203 

derstand the joke conveyed by the substitution of 
an / for an r in the word expurgation. There is 
danger, too, after you rise from your bed, of get- 
ting goats' or asses' milk in your tea and coifee 
— a commingling rather frequent than otherwise 
among the economical fo7ida people of the coun- 
try ; while a little later on, at the eleven o'clock 
breakfast, you may suffer the further indignity of 
getting cow instead of beef in response to your or- 
ders, if you don't recollect that vacca (cow) is the 
general term for the Englishman's national dish. 
In many a place, moreover, — I will not slander 
Cordova, — you will find relics of an old Spanish 
custom, now obsolescent, of having restaurants, 
whither you may bring your own comestibles and 
have them cooked on the premises. Coffee is 
extensively adulterated with roasted acorns, while 
' as for the parties to whose special troughs this 
article of consumption is consigned in other coun- 
tries, they are fed on chestnuts, so that if the 
prodigal son had followed his porcine occupation 
in this country, he would not have been so badly 
off in descending to the husks which the swine 
did eat' The exquisite whiteness and delicacy 
of the Spanish bread, however, kneaded as it is 
all by hand, and the rich and ropy chocolate, in 
both of which they excel the world, afford some 
compensation to the disappointed coffee-lover. 
I have read in some book on Spain that tea in 



204 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

that country is regarded as a sign of advanced 
tendencies, and is affected only by the strong- 
minded. Meanwhile, whether from contrast with 
other things, or from whatever reason, I, person- 
ally, have had many a delicious cup of Souchong 
in these Spanish hotels. However true it be that 
though the mantilla may be put on by any one, yet 
it can be worn by none but a Spanish lady, good 
tea is certainly made elsewhere than in England. 
A glance into the market-place of Cordova will 
show you the truth of the Italian saying that 'the 
watermelon is for eating, drinking, and washing 
your face.' There they lie in great green-and- 
silver heaps, as many-striped as Joseph's coat, 
many of them carefully dissected and presenting 
their tantahzing interiors to the greedy eyes of 
the surrounding urchins. They are handed in 
and out of car-windows, carried affectionately 
under the arm of peregrinating working-people, 
and, with the green-and-crimson //w/V;^/^^* (Span- 
ish peppers), the greengages, figs, and apricots, 
the transparent masses of jellied-looking grapes, 
and the great barrels of ready-boiled thunny-fish 
from the Mediterranean, furnish a variety of re- 
past very daintily conceived for lightening the 
pangs of summer hunger. There is never a mo- 
ment here, as in Paris, when it becomes illegal to 
obstruct the street with refuse, though antiquated 
arrangements are in vogue for going round and 



SPAIN IN PROFIl E 205 

picking up what scavengery may remain. There 
is no life insurance against pestilential odors, 
and this* the Cordovese at least fully understand ; 
for though their houses may be insured against 
fire and hail^ there is nothing to save them from 
the reek of the streets, nor is the place so Mos- 
lemized that the dogs may do the dirt-carrying, 
as in Constantinople. True, parts of Spain are 
found where dogs are so numerous that an offi- 
cial called a perrero (from perro^ a dog) exists, 
whose function it is to drive the animals out of 
the churches ; and doubtless no small percent- 
age of the four million dogs, which Byrne tells 
us an ingenious Spanish statistician lately calcu- 
lated were to be found in Europe, hang around 
the street-corners in Spain and do untold scaven- 
gering there ; but in Cordova the ' woful ballad 
to my lady's eyebrows ' has still to be written, 
and the animal whose moonlit laments generally 
accompany that performance is equally absent. 
Hence he who, according to the East Indian no- 
tion, * goes among the perfumes,' will hardly go 
to the city of the Gaudalquivir. 

A tradition lingers in the old place that it, 
first of all European cities, had the benefit of 
paved streets, introduced in the khalifate of one 
of the Abdur-rhamans. Nothing remains of these 
paved streets except the tradition : no royal car- 
riage could pass through these gorges and de- 



206 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

files, and the custom of festooning chains above 
a door where a royal personage had alighted, or 
even of placing the royal arms over the entry 
and of assuming certain heraldic colors in liver- 
ies, still, I believe, adhered to on such occasions, 
would be operations of some difficulty. The ten 
or fifteen grandees who live at Cordova live the 
quietest of lives ; a few carriages rattle through 
the orange-planted Square Gonsalvo de Cordova^ 
at dusk every evening, but there is little occasion, 
amid the venerable antiquity of the place, to fol- 
low another bizarre custom which I may as well 
mention : when a new carriage has been ordered, 
it is or was the custom to abstain from using it 
till it has borne a priest carrying the Eucharist to 
a sick or dying person. The approach of such a 
procession is indicated by the tinkling of a bell, 
when everything stops, the men take off their 
hats, the women drop on their knees, and every- 
body mutters a paternoster. If a carriage hith- 
erto unused stands before a gentleman's door 
and the priest bearing the Eucharist happens 
that way, he is eagerly invited to seat himself in 
the new vehicle, and then marches in great state 
to the house of the sick person. Ever after that 
the carriage is looked upon as consecrated. 

In Portugal I had an opportunity of noticing 
the existence of considerable wealth in silver and 
jewels among the lower classes ; so in Andalusia 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 20J 

I doubt not that, as George Borrow ^ says, the 
peasant women of I^a Mancha can still afford to 
place a silver fork and a snowy napkin beside 
the plate of their guest ; and one can well be- 
lieve the same author when he says that you may 
draw the last cuarto from a Spaniard provided 
you will concede him the title of cavalier and 
rich man ; but you must never hint that he is 
poor or that his blood is inferior to your own. 
An old peasant, says he, on being informed in 
what slight estimation he was held, replied, ' If 
I am a beast, a barbarian, and a beggar withal, 
I am sorry for it ; but as there is no remedy, I 
shall spend these four bushels of barley, which I 
had reserved to alleviate the misery of the Holy 
Father, in procuring bull-spectacles, and other 
convenient diversions, for the queen, my wife, 
and the young princes, my children. Beggar ! 
Carajo ! The water of my village is better than 
the wine of Rome ! ' 

From heretic boors, 
And Turkish Moors, 
Star of the sea, 
Gentle Marie, 
Deliver me ! 

He who ^ undertakes the adventure of Spain ' 
hath this and many another prayer to keep on 
his lips. Chief among the insect plagues of Cor- 

i Borrow, The Bible in Spain, 



208 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

dova are the animalcule-like guides that infest 
the purlieus of the place. These torments are 
from ten to fifteen years of age, and none of 
them, one is sure, have ever been stuffed and 
put in the museums where they belong. They 
angle for strangers as acutely as the urchins 
at the Alhambra bait their long strings and an- 
gle for martlets and swallows along the Moor- 
ish battlements. Here you no sooner step out 
of your hotel — ' of the kind so admirably de- 
scribed in the wondrous tale of Udolfo ' — than 
immediate assault and battery take place, and 
you are accompanied almost by force, whether 
you will or not, by a small edition of the Ency- 
clopaedia Hispanica, bent on describing the whole 
town to you from the time Martial called it 
' dives Corduba,' down to the days of Amadeus. 
And from the general and immediate wreck of 
everything which these Virgils make in conduct- 
ing their Dantes through this under-world, and the 
vestiges of dilapidation everywhere met with on 
the road, it is open to belief that Andalusia is a 
corruption for Vandalusia. The Gibraltese des- 
ignate the tribe by the singularly appropriate 
name of * rock scorpions.' Many of them are 
said to be born of Spanish mothers and irrespon- 
sible Anglo-Saxon fathers. Their chatter is fre- 
quently of the queerest, and their impudence, ob- 
sequiousness, and avarice are quite as unbounded 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 209 

as their communicative tongues. You are posi- 
tively reduced to picking up stones or making 
menacing movements with your umbrella-handle 
before you ultimately succeed in even intimating 
that you prefer your own company. And the in- 
stant you enter the great mosque through the glo- 
rious orange-garden trailing with roses of Da- 
mascus, they dance about you like so many tar- 
antulas. And then if there is the slightest hole 
or chipping on the edge of the money you hand 
them, there is not the slightest possibility of their 
taking it or of your having rest that day. On 
them each stranger exerts an attractive force 
fully equal to the famous loadstone of Madrid 
which, with its six pounds, can life a weight of 
sixty. Each one all but considers himself a 
grandee entitled to remain covered in the pres- 
ence of the king. Each one can loll as ineffably 
as any Spanish senator who sits in the House of 
Parliament at the capital, and refreshes himself 
with sweetened water; or, during the august de- 
liberations of the legislative body, takes a stick 
of baked sugar and white of ^gg^ soaks it in cold 
water, and then sucks the bafofi to his heart's 
content ! Only bishops and kings may in Spain 
drive through the streets in a coach and six ; but 
the urchins of Cordova are quite equal to experi- 
menting in the same direction. In a country 
where brides dress in black, people who marry 
14 



2 1 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

a second time are outrageously charivaried^ win- 
dow-panes are still leaded instead of being put- 
tied, bluish-crimson Val de Penas is drunk for 
breakfast, and numerous other solecisms flavor 
an otherwise tasteless existence, it is not to be 
expected that the younger population should be 
entirely free from eccentricities. The poor little 
wretches all look as if they lived on the oil-cake 
from which the olive oil has been expressed, and 
which is both fuel for man and fodder for pigs 
and cattle in Spain. They skip about every ruin 
in Andalusia like lizards, or like the sparkling- 
eyed salamanders you come on in your rides 
about Seville ; and yet, if one of the little fellows 
is hospitable enough to ask you to his home at 
meal-time, you will be given the seat of honor, 
and asked to say the benediction. 

The * velvet and fire ' seen by Balzac in the 
eyes of the Catalonian women are certainly re- 
flected in the * orbed omniscience ' of the saucy 
Cordubenses. Wherever there are Venetian 
blinds one is always conscious of a flickering 
presence behind them, and a little orientation 
soon reveals a pair of curious eyes looking out 
on one with Eastern intentness, determined to 
take in the whole of the precious occasion. 
Throughout Spain the semi-twilight life of the 
women has given birth to no end of skillful win- 
dow-tactics. During the day they are immerged 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 2 1 1 

in the shadows of their chambers ; the patios 
are marble Walhallas where the shadows fight 
each other in the amber dusk, and the light dies 
in the fountains, or is drunk in by the heavy 
chalices of the flowers, leaving little behind. 
Hence the universal resort to the curtained in- 
telligence-box of the windows. Still what the 
architects technically call ' fenestration ' is but 
scantily developed in Cordova, for, as in the 
East, the windows generally look on the inner 
court, and if there are outer windows they are 
jealously grilled and draped. The streets of 
Cordova are mere blinding streaks of sunlight 
during the day, and too full of curves and spirals 
withal, to admit of any great perspective ; hence 
little can be seen, except perhaps your vis-a-vis 
across the street breakfasting on Jamon con dulces 
(ham with sweets) and washing down the meal 
with potations of wine out of a pig-skin coated 
internally with pitch. As for drinking water 
without a lump of sugar, or a spoonful of anise- 
seed brandy in it, that is quite unhealthy ! 

It is said that the descriptions of Montserrat 
made so powerful an impression upon Goethe's 
mind that he deliberately appropriated the scen- 
ery for the fifth act of the second part of Faust. 
It seems most probable that had he seen Cor- 
dova, so unique an experience would have found 
a niche in his West-Easterly Divan. The thyme, 



212 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the wild flax, the box, the dwarf ilex, the mastic, 
the masses of purple clematis, and the aconite 
blossoms that hang in the crevices of the Sierra 
Morena and spice the air in early summer, would 
have delighted the great German philosopher, and 
perhaps have given rise to a * Spanische Reise,' 
thus realizing Tennyson's saying that * a book of 
travels may be so written that it shall be as im- 
mortal as a great poem.' For if ever a man had 
the elements of a great traveler, harmoniously 
blended with noble poetic and scientific powers, 
Goethe was such a man. 

While sojourning at Cordova I did not hear 
the great bell of the cathedral, so I cannot say 
whether it, as they say of the cathedral bell of 
Toledo, is roomy enough to permit fifteen shoe- 
makers to seat themselves in it, with space 
enough to draw out their threads without elbow- 
ing each other ; but bells big and little I did 
hear, and in considerable quantity. Kneeling 
and standing are generally the only admissible 
postures in Spanish churches ; it is rare to see 
any one sitting. In Cordova the churches are 
numerous, but they close early and open late, so 
that visitors who drop in in the incidental way of 
English and Americans and stay but a few hours 
are frequently disappointed in their efforts to see 
them. In one or two of the great Spanish cathe- 
drals there is a little greasy cushioned shelf in 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 213 

a certain corner of the church where the dead 
infants of the poor are deposited that they may 
get the Christian burial which their parents are 
unable else to procure for them. It is then the 
business of the parish to bury them. In Barce- 
lona I remember frequently seeing huge black- 
plumed hearses rapidly driven through the streets, 
while within them, entirely exposed to the view, 
were fixed tiny snow-white coffins with the re- 
mains of deceased children being galloped (!), en- 
tirely unaccompanied, to the grave. The shock- 
ing disregard of the dead is rather striking in a 
people so punctilious to the living. 

If there are things to shock the sensibilities of 
strangers in Spain, there are many others which 
foreign nations would find it admirable to imitate. 
Capital punishment, while it exists, is extremely 
repugnant to the Spanish feelings, and many are 
the criminals that are acquitted on the plea of 
* insanity.' They are not, however, immediately 
dismissed and allowed to rove around till the 
perpetration of a new crime brings them again 
within the reach of justice. Spanish ideas are 
far more precise : the criminals acquitted on the 
plea of * insanity ' are literally and wholesomely 
sent to the mad-house ! 

Their antiquated modes of treading out grapes 
with the feet, of drawing off wine into huge 
eight hundred or twelve hundred gallon stone-jars, 



214 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

embedded in the earth, of distilling brandy from 
grape-skins, of threshing out grain by driving a 
donkey with a harrow round and round over it, 
and (formerly) of depositing thousands of bush- 
els of corn in conical holes made in the dry earth 
where it kept for several years, are simply cus- 
toms characteristic of themselves, and show little 
advance in the last thousand or two years. But if 
they are behind in these things they are before in 
others. Cordova and other Spanish cities are full 
of charitable institutions, excellently managed ; 
the people are personally pure, sober, and honest ; 
and though there is more or less * desecration of 
dove-cotes,' flagrant vice is rare. Thieblin, who 
knows the Spanish people well, speaks of their 
rare self-restraint, good-humor, and temperate- 
ness. They have had more than twenty revolu- 
tions since the beginning of this century, and 
perhaps as little bloodshed as was ever recorded 
of revolutions so numerous. Books which, like 
Baxley's Spain, ^ systematically vilify the Span- 
iards and make them out the most abject nation 
on the face of the earth, cannot be too strongly 
reprehended. Miss Eyre, an indignant English- 
woman, and George Augustus Sala, sent similar 
fictions to their friends at home. * If English 
ladies could only imagine what a fearful impres- 
sion is produced upon a Spaniard when he sees, 
1 H. W. Baxley, Spain, 1875. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 215 

under his radiant sky, a British home-made dress, 
a pair of big, " comfortable, solid, leather boots," 
and a mushroom-like, black straw sun-hat, they 
would forgive him all the incivilities he might 
have proved capable of, in a moment when his 
sense of beauty was so severely hurt/ 

One writer will declare that the male popula- 
tion of Madrid is the most atheistic in Europe ; 
another that every individual Spaniard is an ever- 
active crater of tobacco smoke ; another that 
there is a hereditary deficiency of teeth, in the 
Spanish Bourbon house \ and a fourth that the 
general unreliableness of the Latin race is but 
one of the natural results of the whole of their 
historical development. Wallis,^ Irving, Byrne, 
Thieblin, Borrow, Bayard Taylor, Hay, and Hare, 
are almost the only English travelers who have 
done the country justice. Miss Kate Field ^ 
touches off delightfully many of the foibles and 
frailties of the national character without wound- 
ing the susceptibilities of the people. But it is 
really difficult to find a wise and sober-minded 
man who can write in a wise and sober-minded 
way about Spain. 

The red, green, and yellow -tiled roofs, and 
blue, bubble -like domes of Valencia, will be 
missed in Cordova; but every turn brings out 

1 S. T. Wallis, Glimpses of Spain, 1854. 

2 Ten Days in Spain. 



2l6 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

something idiosyncratic : the characteristic fretted 
balconies and doors admitting into half-illumi- 
nated inner parlors ; quaint brass Moorish lamps 
swinging from the centre of the rooms ; curious 
bronze door-knockers, representing a clinched 
fist, or an open female hand with the outside 
turned back ; lion-heads, with wide-open mouths 
for letter-boxes ; floors pebbled in mosaic with 
vari-colored stones, so as to form rude but ef- 
fective bits of ornamentation ; marble tanks, and 
garden pavilions wreathed in creepers ; or walks 
that bend round and round their graveled spaces 
as flexibly as the Toledo blades, which may be 
curled up and put away in a box, or even tied 
into knots, so rarely tempered is the steel. It is 
essentially a place of details. Shady alamedas 
take you along the Guadalquivir, where the mag- 
nificent bridge ascribed to Augustus Caesar stands 
out boldly in the foreground, one of the rarest 
sixteen-arched bits of bridge structure in the Pen- 
insula. Old Moorish mills beneath chafe the 
green waters into foam as the sun glints on the 
bronzed torsos of boys bathing in the stiller 
pools j while the scythe-like sweep of the river 
throws a grandiose arm about the antique walls, 
and seems to gather them in a wide embrace. 
You wonder if an offshoot of that wondrous 
Roman road, described by the historian as more 
than four thousand miles in length, stretching 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 21/ 

from Jerusalem to the confines of Scotland, did 
not pass over this bridge and into the city of 
Cordova, and on down to ultimate Cadiz. And 
it would require but little imagination, and less 
rehabilitation, to fancy the panoply and glitter of 
Roman legions, as they defiled along the oppo- 
site bank, and then, in a long golden ribbon of 
dust, threaded their way over this bridge. Many 
a procession, doubtless, with the Virgin as gen- 
eralissima^ — so she was proclaimed when Valen- 
cia was besieged by the French, — has come with 
chant and incense along this solid monument of 
Roman toil, and entered one of the nineteen 
richly carved portals of the cathedral which 
stands in front of the bridge ; and, doubtless, on 
still summer nights, during the great Ramadan 
ceremonies, the brimming river caught a reflex 
from the ten thousand lamps hanging in the 
Kaaba of Spain, and illumining the sanctuary of 
Abdur-rhaman. What a ' Cloudcuckooborough ' 
there must have been in the water then, and what 
a medley of twilight muezzin-towers, leaning over 
and disporting their slender apparitions among 
the water-lights ! 

You have seen a great bell of crystal thrown 
over some rare clock of precious workmanship, 
and guarding with its ambient clearness every 
nicest detail from harm ? One is reminded of 
that in looking on the Mosque of Cordova for 



2l8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the first time ; not that these solid yellow walls 
and battlements are by any means transparent ; 
far from it ; but from the perfect picture of Ori- 
ental religious life which they dome over and 
hedge in for us. It is the fairy acorn, that ex- 
panded into a pavilion, and grew into a tent, and 
covered a whole army with trumpets and ban- 
ners. There is a certain hesitation in applying 
numbers and measurements to such a structure ; 
and yet, perhaps, in that way the best idea can 
be gained of the ampleness, the vistaed distances, 
and the fertility of its interior. It is rich in every 
way, — in dimensions, in decoration, in subtle 
elaboration of detail, in complexity without en- 
tanglement, in simplicity without any sudden 
check to imaginative expatiation as the eye 
courses through its thousand pillars, as if gazing 
from the centre of some multiple, star-petaled 
flower, radiating in every direction. To me, the 
mosque was more like a vast, many-aisled cham- 
ber, than a church. The roof is hardly more 
than five-and-thirty feet high, while the dimen- 
sions are something like six hundred and twenty 
feet long by four hundred and forty feet wide. 
Fifty towers garnish the walls, and between them 
run serrated battlements, with here and there a 
foliated Moorish arch, an elaborate bronze door, 
or a pinnacle. Every precious stone that can be 
carved into pillars" and thrown into perspectives 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 219 

is here represented in monolith. Jasper, verd- 
antique, and porphyry, become commonplace 
before you disentangle yourself from the forty- 
eight naves among which you are enforested, — 
twenty-nine running north and south, and nine- 
teen running east and west. Just as if one 
should insert a silver heart in a beautiful human 
frame, and expect it to keep up the subtle en- 
ginery of circulation : so, just in the centre of 
this gorgeous and venerable mezquita, has been 
dropped a Gothic chapel which pierces the roof, 
interrupts the labyrinthine maze of columns, and 
is altogether out of place. The idea is a prompt- 
ing from the evil dreams of a Cordovese bishop. 
To gain the mosque you cross the Garden of 
Oranges, filled with orange-trees three hundred 
years old, palms of unknown antiquity, cedar, 
and cypress. The whole garden, in blossom sea- 
son, is a solid perfume ; there is a great fount- 
ain of Abdur-rhaman, ' Servant of the Merciful,' 
which flickers restlessly under the heated odors, 
and is surrounded by highly original human fig- 
ures bearing water-jars : there are two colon- 
nades, arched over, at the ends : there are walks, 
and there is a noble belfr}^ 

*The roof,' says a chronicler of the wonders 
of this mosque, ' was entirely overlaid with fret- 
work, such as the Arabs alone knew how to exe- 
cute, with a wealth of design, and a precision of 



220 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

detail unrivaled by any other artists, in their 
wonderful stucco, of which we see such perfect 
remains at this day. This rich stucco ornamen- 
tation was illuminated in colors at once brilliant 
and mellow, and a value, obtainable by no other 
means, was given to the work, by the lavish inter- 
spersion of gilding, which covered every inch of 
the material. The walls were of such fine and 
delicate tracery that they could only be com- 
pared to a fabric of lace, the exquisite finish of 
which was shown by an ingenious system of il- 
lumination from behind. The graceful and pict- 
uresque Moorish arches were not only gilded, 
but were enriched with studs and bosses of glass 
mosaic, wrought with so much skill by the Arabs 
that they had the effect of rubies and emeralds, 
topazes and sapphires, and, like golden bows en- 
riched with gems, were supported, as they still 
are, by columns of marble, alabaster, verd-an- 
tique, jasper, and porphyry. Amidst this gor- 
geous profusion of labor were suspended the 
countless gold and silver lamps, which shed their 
brilliancy upon the costly detail, and illumined 
the remotest corners of this vast treasury of 
arts/ 

A saunter through this extraordinary building 
reveals the truth of the description. Perhaps the 
rarest piece of mosaic in the world is in the 
Mihrab, — the Holy of Holies, where the Koran 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 221 

was kept ; within this sanctuary, and the whole 
spot where it is found, breathes breathless purity, 
stillness, and beauty. It is pure and perfect as 
a lily, — this domed recess, with its seven-sided 
floor, cupola, and wall of seven sides, keeping 
apart from the garish chapels which adjoin it, as 
if afraid its ethereal skirts might be tainted with 
the contact. 

The pleasant lingering in Cordova, however, 
had to come to an end, and the beauty of the ca- 
thedral and orange courts left for another day. 
It is a place that leaves behind many gentle and 
abiding regrets, many happy memories, many 
light and spiritual longings. 



XI. 

One of those beautiful old cities in Spain in which one finds every- 
thing ; cool walks shaded by orange-trees along the banks of a river, 
great open squares exposed to the burning sun ; . , . . labyrinths of 
buildings all confused together. — Kenelm Digby, Broadstone of Hon- 
our. 

Ultimus suorum moriatur ! — Inscription for Toledo. 

The journey from Granada to the Fontaine- 
bleau of the Spanish kings is more interesting 
than such journeys usually are in Spain. If you 
come from Granada, the fertile Vega is trav- 
ersed ; orchards, pineries, and wineries are seen 
on all sides, and you have a chance to enjoy the 
Moorish city by the light of dawn. The train 
leaves at five, and it is necessary to rise very 
early to catch it. To be alone in a calesa, travers- 
ing a huge wood and many ill-paved and worse- 
lighted streets, past mysterious-looking people 
with lanterns picking up things in the street or 
sitting brigand-like in recessed doorways, under 
shrines of the Virgin where a tiny taper tells of 
some faithful heart that has put it there ; past 
groups of chattering washerwomen washing by 
starlight in the public tanks j past Moorish 
gateways and beautiful horse-shoe arches, silent 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 223 

churches and towering walls ; amid shadows that 
seem perpetual, and over cobble-stones that re- 
sound like muskets with their sharp ring through 
the soundless night ; the most brilliant stars 
peeping in through the long avenues, and a soli- 
tary bell pealing forth the melodious angelus ; to 
be alone with a ferocious little Spanish driver, a 
pair of mighty mules with shaven coats and bells, 
among the stars and trees and associations : all 
this was at least romantic, and grew every mo- 
ment more so, as one remembered the multiply- 
ing accounts of recent murders and robberies. 
However, nothing happened, and we arrived in 
safety, after an uncommonly long ride, at the 
station. At intervals during the drive — which, 
apart from its loneliness, was charming with 
early freshness and dew — we caught sight of 
the queer-looking policemen perambulating the 
darkened streets with a huge staff and lantern, 
ever and anon crying the hours, and accompany- 
ing the cry by a peculiarly sweet mediaeval chant : 
A-ve Ma-ri-a-a-a-a pii-ri-si-ma-a-a^ l-a-s tres-s-s ; se- 
re-no-O'O, (Hail holiest Mary, ^t is three ; clear.) 
One hears the cry and sees the observance every- 
where through Spain, and the sky is so prevail- 
ingly j-^r^/^^ or clear, that the policeman now goes 
by that name and is called el sereno. The in- 
vocation to the Virgin is an ancient usage, and, 
no doubt, in the mind of the superstitious sereno^ 



224 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

seems a sort of amulet to ward off peril. The 
position is not without danger where night is so 
generally turned into day as in Spain, and the 
street swarms with overflowing life. 

A few miles from Granada we reached the 
little station of Pinos, where Isabella's messenger 
overtook Columbus as he was going away to seek 
the help of Henry VII. of England, after repeated 
disappointments. At Bobadilla, breakfast and 
a change of cars : then a long journey through 
mountains and plains glimmering with sunlight, 
pink and yellow cliffs, sombre olives, and white 
hamlets. It was a journey through a kitchen- 
range. The Gaudalquivir, which we followed 
part of the way, was hot and sluggish. Very 
little fruit could be obtained. Water, water, was 
everywhere (for a wonder) cried for sale up and 
down the stations, and one's only pleasure was 
in washing away the suffocating dust by means 
of a wet sponge. The long day passed more 
rapidly than usual in the perusal of Contreras' 
Monumentos Arabes — a feat (I mean the read- 
ing) of great difficulty, owing to the frightful 
roughness of the train. It was with effort that 
you could keep on the seat at all ; sleeping was 
out of the question, and at every respiration at 
least an ounce or two of the impalpable Sierras 
all around seemed to be taken into the lungs. 
We passed places immensely famous for their 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 225 

wines, such as Montilla, Val de Penas (the best 
red wine of Spain), and others, and a few bunches 
of exquisite grapes bought for two coppers, sol- 
aced the torments of the trajet, A wave of blue 
mountains was seen in the distance absolutely 
covered with timber — a rare sight in Spain. 
Peasant women brought the peculiarly graceful 
white clay water-jugs made in this district to the 
train for sale, which travelers here should never 
be without ; beggars without number promenaded 
up and down and exhibited their pranks to the 
delectation of the passengers, and besought the 
compensation which Providence had denied them. 
Alcazar was reached at midnight, and everybody 
got out and took chocolate and sweet cake, al- 
ready hospitably set out at long tables for the 
expected guests. At half-past four we reached 
Aranjuez, and found the vast station almost ab- 
solutely deserted — no carriages, omnibuses, or 
vehicles of any description at hand. 

The morning star shone with intense brilliance 
over the tree-tops and the air had a rare keen- 
ness and purity. 

A sleepy porter was secured and a short walk 
brought us to the Hotel de los Ambaj adores, An- 
tigua de los Infantes, — more like a calaboose 
than a hotel, inside and out. The astonished gar- 
^on and chambermaid having recovered from the 
IS 



226 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

shock given by our early and unexpected arrival, 
we were conducted to our cell. 

Aranjuez is only a short distance from Madrid 
and in that respect is more like Versailles than 
Fontainebleau. One gazes on its wide Dutch 
streets, Louis XIV. architecture, spaciousness, 
and verdure with astonishment, in contrast with 
the picture of most Spanish towns, — Gothic or 
Moorish styles, narrowness, closeness, and aridity. 
Aranjuez is quite a city of magnificent distances, 
and according to one is as much of a failure as 
the city which originally gave 'birth to that ap- 
pellation. . But I do not think so. To some it 
looks like a vast Louis XIV. joke perpetrated on 
the Spanish people : very broad avenues, very 
long arcades, very lofty sycamores, elms, and 
oaks, very trim French gardens, fountains, and 
statuary. An old chateau built in 1727, and 
embellished by Philip V., Ferdinand VI., and 
Charles III., with tapestried and rococo rooms 
populous with clocks and gilded furniture, fres- 
coes and tessellated floors, it is simply a quaint 
old picture of French life in the eighteenth cent- 
ury, such as we see it in Watteau's pictures, and 
it is quite a lovely spot for one of Watteau's 
garden-parties — everything, of course, though 
French, flavored with Spanish taste. Aranjuez* 
is at one season of the year — when the court 
arrives — a fashionable suburb of Madrid, and 



to 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 22/ 

then awakes from its drowsy, deserted, eighteenth 
century look, into the dwelling-place of ambas- 
sadors, ministers, court-people, and soldiers. I 
delight in its splendid planes and elms. The 
Tagus and the Jarama have their confluence in 
the palace gardens and form enchanted isles full 
of dells, bowers, and lover's walks, with the ever- 
melodious sound of rushing waters and rustling 
leaves. Many famous scenes of love and in- 
trigue have taken place within the precincts of 
the Jardin Real of Aranjuez. I visited it just 
before sunset, when the softest and goldenest 
evening light was streaming down the long walks, 
lighting up the river and the giant cork-trees, the 
many fountains, glades, and arbors. Just below 
the palace is a large artificial cascade before 
which the river spreads out into a broad glassy 
floor, spanned by a graceful iron bridge ; beyond, 
vista on vista of really grand sycamores and elms 
radiating en eventaiL All is delightfully spacious, 
friendly, and characteristic. I was afraid of get- 
ting lost in the bushy wilderness, especially as 
the shadows began to lengthen and the depart- 
ing sun shed bewildering light in my face, as 
through some great golden rose window of an- 
cient time. The water-works are most extensive, 
but the fountains were all dry when my visit took 
place. Urns and statuary accentuated the all- 
embracing green of the beautiful wood. In front 



228 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

of the palace was a flower-garden in most abund- 
ant bloom, running along the Tagus and over- 
looking one of the islets. Around Aranjuez, low, 
snuff-colored hills, calcined to powder by the sun, 
give one that constant surprise of contrast found 
in perfection only in this country. 

In the morning I took 'a guide and visited the 
Casa del Labrador, an elegant palace built by 
Charles III., more elegant than any lady's dream 
immersed in reveries a la Pompadour. A special 
permit gave us entrance, which was effected after 
a walk of about a mile down one of those mag- 
nificent elm aisles called calles in Aranjuez. 
Casa del labrador means * laborer's cottage ^ ' but 
this delicate palace is more like one of the pro- 
verbial chateaux en Espagne than anything I have 
seen. Airy lightness, infinite grace of decora- 
tion, lavish and fastidious ornament, charming 
vistas from one room to another, — such is a faint 
description of this low square building, most un- 
interesting on the outside, built perhaps accord- 
ing to the Moorish superstition of avoiding the 
Evil Eye by too great display, but inside, a series 
of matchless boudoirs fit for a transformed Cin- 
derella. You almost forgive the ' aristocracy of 
skin ' in contemplating the structures reared by 
their ill-gotten wealth ; so much taste, grace, and 
refinement have been displayed by them. One 
enters by a staircase whose brass balustrade 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 229 

(hung with cloth) has gold to the amount of 
fifteen thousand dollars mixed with it. Then 
begins a suite of apartments where Scheherazade 
might have told her stories — small, dainty, cab- 
inet-like rooms full of the loveliest German and 
Italian tapestries, and frescoed by Luca Gior- 
dano, Velazquez, Lopez, Maella and others. 
Marble mantels and tables filled with splendid 
clocks, for which the Spanish kings had a mania \ 
sets of rare furniture, walls inlaid with mirrors, 
a museum with fine tessellated floor, full of mar- 
bles from the ruins of Italica, near Seville, a 
many-colored salon with the four points of the 
compass pictured on the wall, and chairs and 
lounges, such as one reads of in Madame De La- 
fayette and Mademoiselle De Scudery, dying to 
have one sit on them ; a small room wonderfully 
inlaid with platinum, ebony, and ivory, profusely 
gilded and chased as any Philippe jfigalite snuff- 
box : — one is lost in the graceful detail of this 
architectural dream of an ennuyL It is the Pal- 
ace in the Woods of the fairy tale ' beyond the 
twenty-ninth land, in the thirtieth kingdom.' 
When the wonderful clock — which is a music- 
box, planisphere, and time-piece all in one — 
begins to play like harmonica-bells, one mo- 
mentarily expects the enchanted princess to 
spring forth and dazzle the scene with her As- 
lauga hair. 



230 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

The visit to the palace was certainly a pleasant 
conclusion to the long walk. Altogether, an ex- 
cursion to Aranjuez is well worth making. My 
impressions of it would be entirely pleasing, were 
it not for the drunken guide, who desired extor- 
tionate pay for what he did not show me, the 
exorbitant bill, and the quantity of counterfeit 
money which I got in exchange for an Alphonse 
d'or. Spain is literally filled with bad money, es- 
pecially paper money, and half-peseta and two-pe- 
seta pieces. Everywhere, as one walks along, in 
the hotels and out of them, the ring of money on 
the stones is heard, — a process invariably re- 
sorted to to test the genuineness of coins. The 
copper money — and not always that — is the 
only safe money to take. Five-franc pieces, 
and pieces of twenty-five francs, gold (Alphonses 
d'or), sixteen-onza pieces, gold four-duros (dollar) 
pieces, and others, are constantly rejected as 
false and worthless. A short time ago the very 
bills of the Bank of Spain were refused outside 
of Madrid. At the stations, in front of the win- 
dow where railway tickets are sold, there is al- 
ways a small piece of marble or stone on which 
the ticket agent rings the gold and silver to see 
whether the timbre is true. If not, he will reject 
what is offered. Avoid, therefore, the cambio del 
moneta^ or money-changer, as you would the 
plague. Get no money except from a well- 



Known ban 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 23 I 



chown banking-house ; scrutinize the two-peseta 
and half-peseta pieces carefully, and take no gold 
in change which you have not subjected to a 
sharp ring on the stone. Such simple rules will 
be of great service to a tourist in Spain unaccus- 
tomed to such an inundation of counterfeits as 
exists in that unfortunate country. Many Span- 
iards are wonderfully acute in detecting bad 
money. They will reject a piece instantly on the 
most cursory examination, for reasons often in- 
scrutable to you. The safest plan then is to 
follow their example and test every individual 
piece, yellowish-looking fifty centimes pieces, 
escudos, duros, golden doubloons, and all. An 
acquaintance of a friend of mine received thirty 
dollars in gold counterfeits at one time from a 
cambio del moneta, which he afterward tried to 
get rid of in masses for the soul of a dead friend ! 
The prudent padre refused j only good money 
passing current in purgatory. One often sees 
cambio del moneta, bureau de change^ inoney 
changed^ etc., alluringly figured in gilt letters on 
plate glass windows, but only absolute necessity 
should force a traveler into these dens of Jews 
and money-stealers. I met with a very honorable 
exception in Bayonne, where I had occasion to 
exchange a considerable amount of French gold 
for Spanish. The money all proved good. 



232 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

But what a contrast between Aranjuez and 
Toledo ! If Aranjuez is all spaciousness, vast- 
ness, fertility, light and grace, what shall I say 
of squeezed up, jammed in, tormenting, tortur- 
ing Toledo, tied in a Gordian knot to its precipi- 
tous hill ? Simply that it has been greatly over- 
rated. Of course an American transported from 
one of his own perfectly new, regular cities to 
the heart of this venerable town would rub his 
eyes for a long time over its startling combina- 
tions, church-encrusted steeps, plateresque hos- 
pitals, and purgatorial alleys \ and a guide would 
have to be taken before he even left the hotel 
door. But beyond the cathedral Toledo is tire- 
some. There is endless material for florid expa- 
tiation at every step. It is a constant ascent or 
descent, up or down, in or out, here a little and 
there a little, the whole livelong time, up against 
saint this or saint that, along the abysses of the 
Tagus, over immensely ancient and picturesque 
bridges, through mauresque portals into fantas- 
tic old Jewish synagogues where artists sit and 
sketch the arabesques, and old women sleep be- 
side jarras of water, over their Dorcas-like knit- 
ting j Punch and Judy market-places, where 
heaped fruit, stone colonnades, flies, mendicants, 
dogs, donkeys, mighty panniers and church 
steeples combine into a sketch by some crazy 
Fuseli ; then up and down and round and round 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 233 

again as in a dance of dervishes, a thousand 
miles away from the lovely sunlit patios of Seville 
and Cordova with their marble cloisters, mystery, 
and filigree. Toledo is simply hideous. The 
wrench up the hill from the railway station, over 
the Bridge of Alcantara (in Arabic the Bridge), 
by the Puerta del Sol with its medallion and 
horse-shoe arches, is a witch's ride on a broom- 
stick. Toledo turns in every conceivable direc- 
tion as one wanders on up, now this, now that 
side of the river, now on the hill-tops, now in the 
valley, till the plaza Zocodover is reached and 
the omnibus stops. The whole was like a phan- 
tasmagoria to me — the mysterious moonlight, 
milk-white with dust, falling on groups of half- 
illumined people standing beneath walls or along 
battlements or in the sombre market-place; tall 
mediaeval houses with their basements in pro- 
found obscurity and their battlements bathed in 
the August moon; crescent-like streets, with a 
long curved scimitar of brilliant light above the 
houses, like a Toledo blade, while they them- 
selves weltered in a darkness wherein nothing 
could be distinguished ; rapid glances from the 
omnibus into bright cavernous shops full of Span- 
ish figures, to be followed by a quenched state of 
utter stillness and blackness ; then a sharp and 
sudden drawing up before the Fonda de Lino 
where we all joyfully descended into light and 
comfort (as we thought) once again. 



234 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

In Arabic the word fondak means a stable, in 
Spanish a hotel. The Fonda de Lino preserves 
many reminiscences of the etymology. The 
houses are so close together that people are 
continually looking in on each other at unex- 
pected deshabille moments j hence the infinity 
of blinds and sets of blinds, awnings and cur- 
tains, designed to thwart curiosity. A striped 
awning, two sets of curtains, a set of lambre- 
quins, a pair of glass doors, and within these 
folding doors an inch thick, defend me from the 
feminine population of the opposite windows ; 
despite all which a senora with very red arms 
was found leaning out this morning and taking 
a tranquil inventory of me and my room. Fur- 
niture of the times of the crusades, tawdry prints 
and cornice, tiled balcony and floors, a court- 
yard full of huge omnibuses and stable smells 
just below the principal apartments ; corridors, 
laid with brick, running round as a mode of com- 
munication from room to room, ancient table- 
cloths, napkins, and omelettes, fruit and beef- 
steak of by-gone times, wine of peculiar taste, 
chambermaids and gargons of peculiar smell ; 
a cavernous establishment, excavated as it were 
out of several jammed in, dislocated houses ; 
garlic, fleas, and all the odds and ends of long- 
abandoned barbarism in superfluity : such is 
this best of Toledo hotels. The guide-books 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 235 

will not even mention any other. There is no 
room for any other. The traveler is abandoned 
by his guardian genius as he is dropped at this 
fatal door, and Dante's * Lasciate la esperanza voi 
che entrate qui^^ is the handwriting on its wall. 
Immediately one falls into the hands of a guide, 
whose unintelligible French is as complicated as 
the streets ; but, however unintelligible, he can at 
least bring one back to the hotel again, a feat 
nearly impossible of accomplishment alone. One 
had just as well try to follow the meshes of a 
Turkish carpet. Again, the Toledo knife is so 
dextrously used in this vicinity that it is far from 
perfectly safe or satisfactory to venture out alone 
in the evening, especially when the main street 
of the place is hardly wider than the aisle of 
a church. The Goth, the Jew, the Moor, and 
the Christian have all lived and labored here, 
each one doing his best, and leaving his worst 
behind him. One would never have suspected 
Charles V. of having made his capital of this 
guilty place, were it not for the Austrian arms 
blazoned here and there over the gates, and the 
long roll of memorabilia recorded by history of 
his doings here. The whole place is like a monk- 
ish carving on the choir and stalls of some gro- 
tesque cathedral, foliage, fiends, pigs, fairies, and 
griffins pouring their grinning imagery over the 
seats where the old canons used to sit and sleep 



236 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

in the interminable masses. About twenty-five 
thousand people out of the former two hundred 
thousand are bewitched in some way or other to 
inhabit this eyrie, an oven in August and an ice- 
box in March. Artists with skins that cannot be 
punctured, stomachs that can digest pebbles, feet 
and ankles that nothing can pain or sprain, eyes 
a-thirst for motifs^ pockets laden with cuartos for 
the blind, the halt, and the lame at every syna- 
gogue, church-door, and Gothic hospital ; artists, I 
say, endowed with all these, added to the patience 
of Job, the passiveness of San Sebastian, and 
legs like the Christobalon of the cathedral, might 
be tempted to linger in Toledo and paint its rel- 
ics of a triple and quadruple civilization ; but 
surely nobody else. It is a withered corpse sur- 
rounded by burning candles, and paper flowers, 
with, at rare intervals, a kneeling and worshiping 
figure. The place is all nooks and corners, jag- 
gedness and raggedness. One delights to heap 
abuse on its low houses, its stern and solemn 
public buildings, its Saracenic court-yards and 
once enormous but now departed wealth. Very 
pure Castilian is spoken in Toledo, perhaps the 
best in Spain, but how strangely the language of 
architecture has uttered itself ! Toledo is the 
Canterbury of Spain and holds the primacy 
among the archiepiscopal cities. Long stories 
are told of its kingly archbishops and warrior 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 237 

prelates — men like Mendoza, Ximenes, and 
Fonseca — who possessed as much bigotry as 
wealth, and power enough to win them the name 
of the third king. The Cid was the alcaide of 
this great city ; it was once full of palaces and 
gardens ; an opulent court reveled here in the 
sixteenth century and an immense and varie- 
gated page of history is the page which poor 
Toledo, now a heap of devitalized brick and 
mortar, once occupied in the mighty volume of 
human events. The caleche-AxiN^ up its hill, 
which rises terrace above terrace over the Tagus, 
is enough to disenchant the very Don Quixote of 
travelers. City of Generations it is indeed, as 
the Hebrews poetically called it \ City of Silences 
and Tears it might be called now in its desola- 
tion. All that keeps it alive at all is the cathe- 
dral, to which it desperately clings as its last and 
only claim to indulgence. Although but a few 
steps from the fonda, a guide (as said before) is 
quite necessary to find it ; for in spite of a tower 
three hundred and twenty-nine feet high, full of 
grand bells, carvings, and Gothic ornamentation, 
its very existence is never suspected by the unil- 
luminated ; such is the way in which this elegant 
masterpiece of Gothic architecture is concealed 
by its setting of houses. It was begun just ^Mt 
hundred years ago, and its great heart is heard to 
beat when the ' Gorda ' — a bell weighing nearly 



238 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

fifty thousand pounds — begins to toll. The 
weathercock may well crown the cross on top of 
the spire. Toledo has seen many a change in re- 
ligion and politics. Decidedly the most interest- 
ing thing about the cathedral is the old Gothic or 
Muzarabic (mixti-Arabes ?) ritual still celebrated 
in one of its chapels. The chapel was founded 
to preserve this ritual in its purity. The Muzar- 
abes were a mixture of Goths and Arabs, who 
lived under the government of the Eastern con- 
querors of Spain, and were allowed — as so often 
the case under the chivalrous Moslems — to retain 
their Christian ceremonies. Mass, according to 
this rite, is very simple ; there is no auricular con- 
fession ; the creed is repeated when the elevation 
of the host takes place ; the sacramental wafer is 
broken up into symbolic pieces representing the 
Incarnation, Epiphany, Nativity, Circumcision, 
Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and 
Heaven, and there are prayers and collects of 
great beauty and eloquence connected with the 
service. Originally only the Lord's prayer and 
the words uttered by Jesus at the Last Supper 
constituted what was called the Apostolic mass, 
developed afterw^ard into the intricate and gor- 
geous organism of high and low mass. The mass 
is now often performed as a mere curiosity, for 
which a small fee (!) is expected, and though 
once permitted in many churches, is now con- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 239 

fined to this plain little chapel built by Cardinal 
Ximenes. The last spark of a dying faith has 
thus taken refuge in this out-of-the-way corner, 
where it is tolerated like the swallows that build 
in the sculptured cornices, and not absolutely 
driven away, from pure inertia. The contrast be- 
tween it and the splendid spaces devoted to the 
other worship — the girdle of resplendent chapels 
that runs around the cathedral and fills every inch 
of it with all the wealth of art and imagination — 
the multitude of waxen tapers, images and paint- 
ings — the forest that has gone to sleep there and 
suddenly awakened into soaring pillars and arches 
full of the delicious bloom of seven hundred and 
fifty painted windows — the jubilant silences and 
echoing avenues strewn with kneeling figures — 
poor human flowers strewn and trampled on be- 
fore the cross of the Redeemer : the contrast be- 
tween this and that is just the contrast between 
plain reason and sensualized imagination. There 
can be no pure flame burning at the end of this 
long taper of Catholicism ; the light is murky, 
the wick is enveloped in human grossness. At 
the cathedral door the usual tableau of beseech- 
ing and supplicating humanity ; and for ^v^ hun- 
dred years it has' been lying there, just in the 
same posture ; attudinizing hypocrisy, tableaux 
vivants on whom the vermin is almost a mode 
of locomotion, and who, like an ancient cheese, 



240 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

would walk away in spite of themselves were 
they not ironed to the spot by human greed. On 
glancing up, a mighty rose-window, huge as one 
imagines the wheels of Ezekiel's fiery chariot to 
have been, meets the gaze ; but the splendor of 
its coloring — enhanced by its counterpart on the 
opposite side and fitly emblemizing the trans- 
figured blood of Christ — is unrevealed till one 
enters and looks up. Then the gaze wanders 
round through a jeweled chromosphere, a trans- 
formation of sunlight into parterres of flowers, 
a sublime picture and allegory in emblazoned 
glass, an unknown iridescence from all the vio- 
lets, lilies, and roses that ever bloomed, flooding 
the pillared distances beneath and lifting the soul 
to sweet meditation. These windows alone are 
enough to redeem the whole uncomeliness of 
Toledo — Alcazar, Zocodover, and all. One sees 
in their beauteous light the bruised and bleeding 
souls of a whole episode of Christianity eloquently 
recalled to amber and purple life — the vanished 
gardens of Spain a-blaze in these painted fields 
again — the gold of Hispaniola, the spices and 
musk of the Philippines, the passionate colors of 
the Indies, the blue sheen of undiscovered seas, 
all throbbing again under this choired and vaulted 
city of the dead archbishops, the cathedral of 
Toledo. The pillars sing under the vivid glory ; 
the retablo behind the high altar — one of the 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 24 1 

masterpieces of that infinitely peopled, multiform, 
and many-colored Gothic — becomes conscious 
to the touch with all the laden thought and suf- 
fering of its twenty-seven artists ; the tombs of 
kings and cardinals lying here become full of 
life. The filigree work, fine-drawn as a spider's 
web, waves in the colored air, and the church is 
vivid with the congregated throng of its clergy. 
What a pity that the choir stands just in the mid- 
dle of the cathedral, — a church in itself, seventy 
feet long and forty-five wide. This is generally 
the case in all the great Spanish churches ; a 
thousand pities, for a Gothic cathedral, like an 
avenue of trees, must have an uninterrupted vista, 
else the effect is spoiled. This, too, is full of 
marvelous stalls, all carved and time-worn, with 
marble pavement, a huge, eagle-shaped lectern 
and two other lecterns in bronze and wood, mel- 
low with age. Beautiful jasper pillars divide the 
stalls : the recesses in which they are placed are 
of alabaster ; saints, prophets, and patriarchs per- 
form a singular religious dance in half-relief round 
the cornice. German and Italian schools have 
vied with each other in encrusting this microscopic 
detail ; while in front rise stands with mighty sing- 
ing-books magnificently illuminated, with leaves 
as thick as the back of a knife. It would simply 
be impertinent to attempt the usual expedition 
around the chapels. It is a pilgrimage from one 
16 



242 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

age and style of ornamentation to another. One 
may, however, well stop before the Puerta de los 
Leones or Gate of Lions, above which, like a 
glorious flower, shines a great rose window twenty 
feet in diameter. 

We were fortunate enough to see part of the 
Virgin's wardrobe, or tesoro^ which they were 
bringing out of her boudoir (one might have 
called it) for the approaching feast of the as- 
sumption. There was a single mania belonging 
to her in which seventy-eight thousand pearls, 
and countless rubies, diamonds, and emeralds 
are embroidered. The attendants carefully in- 
spected the floor with a lighted candle when this 
gem-encrusted rag was taken out of its case. 
Queens, popes, archbishops, and kings have 
given to it lavishly of their ignorance and super- 
fluity. The Virgin's crown, without the stones, is 
valued at twenty-five thousand dollars, and she 
has her mistress of the robes in the chaste and 
exemplary Isabella II. On occasion the Virgirl 
doll blazes with jeweled milliner}^, and is fol- 
lowed (spiritually) by all the great dames in the 
kingdom, who deem it an especial distinction to 
take care of its wardrobe • and landed estates 
are administered in its name. A writer tells us 
that our Saviour is treated as a constitutional 
king, and called ' His Divine Majesty,' and the 
soldiers present arms when an image like this 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 243 

passes a barrack, the royal march playing all the 
while. Moreover, when rival processions meet, 
which is not seldom the case in this land of pro- 
cessions, a regular battle sometimes ensues, and 
they insult and pelt each other's images. 

To show the extent to which this image wor- 
ship is carried, I take up a journal at random 
and translate a few every-day paragraphs like the 
following : ' Saints of to-day. — San Casiano and 
San Ipolito, martyrs (did you ever hear of them 
before t). Worship : The general jubilee of the 
forty hours in the parish church of Santa Maria, 
where to-morrow there will be high mass, and in 
the evening prayers and reserva. The Novem- 
dial of Our Lady of Atocha (a stick supposed 
to have been brought from Antioch, one of the 
most venerated images in Spain) continues being 
celebrated in her church, and the Transito church 
in San Millan ; and Don So-and-so will be the 
orator of the evening, ending with the reserva 
litany, and salve. Visit of the Court of Mary. 
— Our Lady of Remedies in San Gines, and Our 
Lady of Health in Santiago and San Jose.' 

These are quite chance paragraphs, and are 
taken from a paper purchased at the common 
stand in the street below. And such are and 
have been the immemorial interruptions to be- 
coming and doing something, which now, even in 
this nineteenth century, are in full blaze. If, in- 



244 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Stead of visiting Our Lady of Health and Reme- 
dies with supplication, the good senoras and se- 
fiores would use abundant pure cold water with- 
out and within, abstain from the unwholesome 
messes they are served with at breakfast and din- 
ner, use less bad tobacco, change their linen a 
little oftener, and not respire, expire, and per- 
spire continual garlic, our Lady might be left to 
herself and welcome, and a great deal less. crime 
and vice be prevalent through the length and 
breadth of the land. 

As for Toledo, it is a perfect nest of similar 
observances. For a man of business — the Span- 
iards are mostly men of leisure, having and get- 
ting nothing to do — to live in a place where 
every other day there is a festa, when banks are 
closed, and the remorseless concierge tells you to 
come manana^ would be out of the question. The 
cicerone who accompanied me in my rambles was 
quite dismally sarcastic at the ^ stumps ' called a 
park, the total absence of amusements (except 
passing counterfeit money), the flinty pavements, 
ruin, and age of the place. One could heartily 
sympathize with the poor wretch doomed to exe- 
crable P'rench and Toledo for the rest of his 
days. He took me to the great square Alcazar, 
which Carlo Quinto turned into a palace, — a 
structure of Moorish origin, with two or three 
spacious and beautiful patios^ spotted here and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 245 

there in this vivid sunlight with the blood-red 
trousers of Spanish soldiers, who have taken up 
their abode within, — as nearly everywhere else 
in the land, — while wild ringing of trumpets, 
calling to dinner, saluted our arrival. A short 
distance below stands the military school of 
Santa Cruz, formerly a hospital, a foundation of 
Cardinal Mendoza, whose tomb is in the cathe- 
dral. There are several rich patios^ a grand stair- 
case, and much marvelous plate-work, — a term 
which one will often meet in Spain, meaning an 
infinitude of delicately-molded detail, such as is 
seen on plate, Spanish plata (silver), plataresco. 
It was full of little sticks and puppets of Spanish 
soldiers in nascendo^ who, to my eye, even when 
full grown, are the smallest soldiers in Europe, 
especially the officers ; they have no figure, no 
distinction, no air. Here and there, men and 
women of gigantic size are to be seen, principally 
in the country, — but who can come to any size 
by living on pepper-pods diwd puchero ? 

There the pupil soldiers sat in groups on this 
fairy staircase, themselves more florid and indi- 
vidualized than the Moorish and Renaissance bal- 
ustrade on which they leaned, — each one a little 
world of self-conceit and personal pomp ; polite, 
too, when addressed, and far from devoid of ex- 
cellent qualities. In another part of the town a 
bit of a chapel is shown, called the Christ of the 



246 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Light, where, quotha, the Cid's horse Bavieca 
dropped on his knees one day when he was pass- 
ing by, in homage to a miraculous light, identi- 
cally the same as that placed there by the Goths 
hundreds of years before. I can testify to its 
still being inhabited by Goths, — or Vandals who 
exact tribute of every peregrinating Peter that 
may come that way. 

But, after the cathedral, go to the most charm- 
ing cloister of San Juan de los Reyes, and medi- 
tate among its light and lovely arches, so sad in 
their utter loneliness and decay, so full of blue 
sky, and shining air, and neglected flowers, lin- 
gering there by the kindly sufferance of the cus- 
todian. The church and cloister are famous 
among the famous for their stone-work, where 
the marble is so wonderfully carven that it lacks 
only color to be living verdure, full of a Puck's 
dream of birds and leaves and animals and stat- 
uettes, twining about the columns, and intermin- 
gled in mazy confusion. From the well in the 
centre of the cloister garden Antonio drew a jar 
of crystal water, and drank a draught in mem- 
ory of the Moorish kings, the lovers of untainted 
agua. 

So, you see, Toledo has compensations after 
all! 



I 



XII. 

Madrid, Princesse des Espagnes, 

II court par tes mille campagnes 

Bien des yeux bleus, bien des yeux noirs. 

La blanche ville aux serenades, 

II passe par tes promenades, 

Bien des petits pieds tous les soirs. 

De Musset. 

It was a characteristic stroke of policy with 
the Spanish kings to remove the capital from 
places teeming with dynastic associations, like 
Seville or Valladolid, to a city of the centre, 
known only for the wide plains that surrounded it, 
its pure air, and its spacious possibilities in the 
future. Is it not Thucydides who, in the great 
Sicilian expedition, lays so much stress on the 
power of association, according as the cities he 
describes as taking part in that great event had 
Athenian or Peloponnesian memories behind 
them ? At all events, it is quite likely that disas- 
ter would have ensued in Spain, had not Charles 
V.'s gout providentially let him find rest now^here 
except in the pure air of the Guadarramas and 
the great Castilian plain. To this spot, as to a 
reservoir, flowed all the Spanish influences, — 
hostilities, friendships, kinships, common inter- 



248 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ests ; here they all mixed, and lost the sharpness 
of their angles; and here, from the fusion of 
many heterogeneous elements, resulted a real 
capital, ugly enough withal, but free ground to 
all that stood upon it. A peep into the intricate 
annals of Spain in the Middle Ages will reveal 
half a score of jealous provinces, each striving 
for the mastery, each ready to take arms against 
the other, each eager enough to love God and 
serve the king, provided its God and its king 
were meant, and each filled with ancient rival- 
ries, handed down from father to son, as the old 
Saxons handed down their swords and their jew- 
els. ' Spain,' says a recent writer,^ ' is a coun- 
try of ^v^ Irelands, each discontented with the 
central authority, no matter what party wields it, 
and cordially hating and despising the other 
four.' The mere mention, therefore, of establish- 
ing the capital permanently anywhere, was like 
Roland's horn blown at Roncesvalles, — it made 
all Spanish Christendom dance and rush to the 
rescue. It was only now and then that the strong 
hand of some despotic prince took the rebellious 
provinces to task, and gave them, as it were, a 
good squeeze, that anything like the tranquillity 
of modem times prevailed in Spain, There is 
hardly a country of its extent so cut up by al- 
most inaccessible mountains ; hardly one where 
^ Campion, O71 Foot /;/ Spain , 1878. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 249 

regnant peculiarity has developed in so many- 
sided a way, and national, or rather, provincial 
tendencies have so run along in the parallel 
lines that never meet. The brilliant Andalu- 
sian, the grave Castilian, the fiery Catalonian, 
the foolish Gallician, — these, and many more, 
are types as marked as types could well be, and 
each with its pig-tail of associations behind it 
which it would be sacrilege to touch. The Span- 
ish provinces were a bed of live coals, which any 
chance wind might make a furious fire. The in- 
tense self-respect which distinguishes the Span- 
iard of the present day — his sensitiveness, chiv- 
alrousness in a certain sense, and pimdofior — 
seems in those days to have possessed and per- 
vaded the entire nation as a nation, and to 
have made it preternaturally susceptible to in- 
sult. Hence the constant challenges, combats, 
and wars that took place. Of course, the rise 
and predominance of any one of the many reinos 
into which the kingdom was divided excited very 
naturally the horror and detestation of the oth- 
ers, and made favoritism on the part of the reign- 
ing monarch a very critical thing indeed. Even 
in our own broad land, what a caldron public 
opinion becomes when there is the least hint that 
possibly the capital may be moved to this place 
or to that. The establishment, therefore, of a 
final and permanent resting-place for the King 



250 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

and Cortes, in their Bohemian wanderings from 
one place to another, was a matter of some deli- 
cacy. Madrid came to be the very Cordelia of 
cities, — overlooked, or hitherto trampled under 
foot by her ambitious sisters, but the only one 
eventually that received and entertained the king. 
The Moors, who made nearly everything they 
touched interesting, failed to imbue the desolate 
town with the least tincture of romance. Two 
or three pretty legends are all that are told of it 
in Moorish times. Just as the vandalism of the 
monks erased the precious works of the ancients 
to make glue of the parchment, or procure new 
writing surfaces, so nearly every trace of the 
Moorish occupation was carefully obliterated from 
Madrid. A new leaf was turned over, — and 
that absolutely blank. Hence the intensely pro- 
saic character of everything connected with the 
modern town. There is not the least particle of 
poetry or imagination about the place. While 
nearly every other city in the peninsula is the 
centre of a legendary cycle, and is rich in clus- 
tered romance and folk-lore, Madrid is as tedious 
as a place can well be. It is said to be on a 
river ; but unless one is fortunate enough to be 
present during the spring inundations, the river 
is as invisible as the classic stream that sank be- 
neath the sea in its journey to the Fountain Are- 
thusa : ' To long for a thing like rain in May/ is 



I 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 25 I 



a Spanish proverb. However, to keep up the il- 
lusion, a large bridge spans a valley in the envi- 
rons of the city, and here and there are pools 
of scummy water, at which your washerwoman, 
and many of her compatriots, assemble and wash 
the linen, in which you imagine yourself spot- 
lessly arrayed during your sojourn in the Castil- 
ian city. As Madrid wounded no susceptibili- 
ties, it made an admirable place in which to 
establish the court ; and ever since then it has 
gone on improving from year to year, as if try- 
ing to make the reconciliation still more com- 
plete. In certain moods, it is a real joy to get 
to such a place, — bright, busy, well paved, well 
lighted, clean, — especially after having been tres- 
passing in so modern a fashion on such Nine- 
vehs and Babylons as Toledo, Salamanca, and Al- 
cala. To be one of three or four hundred thou- 
sand people again, — to feel one's self a scrap of 
the delightful miscellaneousness of a great city, — 
accompanied by so much motion, cheerfulness, 
and companionship, — is, after the mortal hush 
of most of the Spanish cities, like a burst of pleas- 
ant music. ' Be mostly silent,' was, I think, a 
maxim of Epictetus ; but he might well say that 
amongst the millions of Rome. A shop-window 
was company enough for Souvestre, who saw in 
it and its outspread merchandise vast possibili- 
ties of instruction and education. But when 



252 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

there is not even this: when 1555, or the 3^ear 
1000, stands printed on every house and face you 
see, and there is not even the tiniest ripple of 
contemporary life afloat on the street, you be- 
come satiated with very emptiness, and even long 
{sancta simplicitas I) for a Spanish newspaper. 

It is not necessary to take what Douglas Jer- 
rold called ' a draught of a look,' to make one's 
mental picture of Madrid ineffaceable. You 
might dip it all in Styx, and still its individuality 
would be plain. I have it burning in me like a 
bunch of tapers : the beautiful green Prado, the 
sunlit, sloping streets, the huge palaces, the Ro- 
manesque churches, the market-places and colon- 
nades, the Puerta del Sol radiant with electric 
lights at night, the squares, street-cars, and the- 
atres, the crowds of well-dressed people, the mag- 
nificent fruit making great spots of splendor in 
the fruit shops, the sweep of the great saffron 
plains as they swoop down and seem to belea- 
guer the city, so suddenly do human habitations 
cease. Madrid breaks off as suddenly as an in- 
terrupted soliloquy. London melts into England 
and Paris into France, so insensibly, that it would 
be hard to tell where the city ends and the king- 
dom begins. (Am I stealing from Emerson ?) 
Madrid, however, is a disk, as sharply defined as 
the moon on an autumn night. There is no deli- 
cate gradation of expansion ; no half-city, half- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 253 

country. You plunge as suddenly in or out of 
the place as in or out of a douche-bath. There 
is a very startling change of subject, from which- 
ever side you approach it. All over Spain there 
has been * gravitation to accentual centres ; ' the 
cities are heavy with life, while the lank extremi- 
ties are famishing for it. There is no minute ir- 
rigating stream of plenteous vitality threading the 
country, and uniting its parts into a huge mesh 
system, as in Holland or Belgium. Spain has 
evidently far too much lajid, and far too few^ peo- 
ple. A single Spaniard can, perhaps, cover more 
geographical square miles than any other individ- 
ual in Europe. Perhaps this communicates to 
his talk that largeness and indefiniteness which 
comes out so delightfully in the speculations of 
Sancho, or in the political talk of your neighbor 
in a railway journey. 

I arrived at night, and w^as struck by the long 
rows of brilliantly illuminated streets that di- 
verged from the stations, and seemed over-filled 
with people. The caVeche in which I was dashed 
headlong over the cobble-stones down a long 
grove-embowered avenue, filled with lamps and 
foot-passengers. My only companion was a lady, 
who asked me to change seats with her, and 
seemed, as I thought, in a very anxious frame of 
mind about something. Her antics were quite 
unintelligible, until I perceived that she was en- 



2 54 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

deavoring to cover something with her skirts, and 
then trying, with a refreshing innocency of coun- 
tenance, to look absent-mindedly out of the front 
window : the object of all which was presently 
explained when the caliche stopped, and a cus- 
toms-officer looked in. 

* Anything contraband ? ' 

To which I, in the guilelessness of several 
empty valises, boldly said for both of us, * No ! ' 
as the lady seemed to have no luggage. When 
we started again, I found that I had been made 
the victim of a pretty misunderstanding. My 
companion, it seems, had a quantity of contra- 
band stuff in a large bag, with which she was en- 
deavoring to evade the rigid octroi^ and this was 
the ^gg she was so uneasily sitting upon ! She 
was profuse in her thanks, and presently an ac- 
complice of hers got in, and returned the cour- 
tesy by offering me a cigarette. We soon got 
to the Puerta del Sol, — the great hotel centre 
of Madrid, — and I extricated myself from the 
rather oppressive affabilities of my companions. 

In my rambles through Spain I have found the 
Spanish women, as a rule, singularly modest. 
Gibraltar — 'that cancer of Spain,' as Fernan 
Caballero calls it — must be excepted, where 
much immorality prevails. Morals are, no doubt, 
lax ; but there is not that form of free and easy 
allocution so popular and prevalent in France. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 255 

'The glad, quick-eyed peasant girls, with great 
golden ear-rings and small silver combs,' so unc- 
tuously described by Lundgren,^ the Swede, seem 
rather reserved than otherwise, at least to for- 
eigners. Some tinkling Spanish lines on the 
subject run as follows : — 

* De ]a raiz de la palma 
Hicieron las Isabeles. 
Delgaditas de cintura y de 
Corazon crueles.' 

In Madrid I had no reaspn to change my opin- 
ion. I saw a great deal of grace and loveliness 
— not the peachy bloom of loveliness that we 
have idealized — the slender, spirituelle, Shak- 
sperian women, with wit like a nettle and man- 
ners like a dove. To compensate for this there 
is nearly always an air of distinction about the 
Spanish women. (Will women ever pardon Goe- 
the for making the serpent the aunt of the human 
race 1 At all events the rhythmic curves of the 
serpent flow through the figures of these women, 
and give them even a weird suggestiveness.) 
There are splendid eyes, pure complexions, clas- 
sic profiles, but none of the brilliance and bloom 
of the north, nor the * emerald eyes and hair of 
gold ' celebrated by Cervantes in the Novelas 
Ejemplares. The snapping black eyes of the 
Frenchwoman, the large, languid stare of th6 
^ En Malares Anteckningar. Stockholm, 1873. 



256 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Briton, are rarely met with in Madrid. The gen- 
eral suavity of manner has passed into the ex- 
pression, and the result is great gentleness and 
luminousness of gaze, a rather fixed look, a lam- 
bent irradiation rather than the darting flicker of 
the Gaulois eye. There is more of the South, 
with its great, gentle passion, its summer sweet- 
ness, its large brightness and candor. A French- 
man's eye is like the green wine of Minho, a 
taste of which nearly takes you off your legs. 
Assault and battery can be committed by such 
an eye, and it sometimes has a flash which is a 
physical back-push. 

Gautier is not wrong to lay so much stress on 
the mantilla and the fan, — the heavy artillery of 
the women of Spain in their wars with the men. 
Take away these, and how helpless become these 
sparkling senoritas ! Return them, and every 
movement at once becomes eloquent. The thou- 
sand kisses of Catullus's Lesbia are no more po- 
tent weapons than this chain-armor of gossamer 
lace and these butterfly-wings of ivory and mother- 
of-pearl, all a-flutter in skillful fingers. It is no 
uncommon thing to see a Spanish woman on her 
knees deep in aves and paternosters^ while her fan 
keeps up its swift automatic motion throughout 
the devotion. What execution is done at theatres 
and operas with this sorcerer's instrument would 
require new Iliads and Odysseys to tell. It is a 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2$J 

very serious part of the Spanish woman's curric- 
ulum to learn all the secret riches of the fan, all 
the varied evolution and manipulation it is capa- 
ble of. 

A lovely midsummer night it was : the little 
balcony, entered by glass doors and hanging high 
above the street, looked down on the long trian- 
gular Puerta del Sol, where a fountain sparkled 
fairily under the moonbeams. A pleasant cool- 
ness floated in through the open windows from 
the distant Guadarramas, and the curtains flick- 
ered under the golden touch of a harvest moon. 
The balcony was just large enough for two chairs 
and was one of the most delightful perches im- 
aginable from which to view the animated scene 
below. This view was like opening a large al- 
bum of water-color sketches in vivid shades, hav- 
ing its contents suddenly endowed with locomo- 
tion. 

There are men half of whose lives are spent 
in this square. If you stay long enough, their 
physiognomies become as familiar as your watch- 
chain ; mustachioed apparitions with lemonade 
complexion, fiercely grappling with the inoffen- 
sive cigarette ; needy hidalgos, who look a re- 
quest for alms ; mute Niobes, supplicating for you 
know not what, and Dying Gladiators that never 
give up till they have wrested your last coin from 
you. Not the least interesting are the monu- 
17 



258 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

mental attitudes of many of these habitues^ show- 
ing the years of careful culture they have passed 
through to become brevetted starers. Then there 
are embodied interjections : men who gesticulate 
like a Catharine-wheel ; fantastic individualities 
that fight shadows and pirouette on their small 
feet in boots too tight for them ; Captain Boba- 
dils, recounting the thronging story of their ex- 
ploits ; and street-corner Maecenases, tapping Art 
on the shoulder. To the ' Gate of the Sun ' all 
men come as to a temple ; it is the Sublime Porte 
of Madrid. The lower stories of nearly all the 
houses and hotels around the square make a gar- 
land of cafes from which music and light stream 
till far in the night. How many hundred-weight 
of mirrors, plate-glass, chandeliers, and marble 
tables are found in this magic circle ; how much 
swallow-tailed humanity serves the crowding vis- 
itors ; how many cisterns of red, white, and blue 
drinks ; orange, strawberry, cherry, and lemon 
water ; of agraz made of green grapes and poured 
out of bottles as long as umbrella handles ; of 
beer-lemonade, or of the exquisite drink made of 
Valencian almonds roasted, ground, and iced : 
a calculation of all this, I say, would require a 
more expert arithmetician than I am. The cheese- 
ices, the whipped chocolate and coifee, the ba- 
nana, apricot, and orange glaces, with the butter- 
ices made of butter and imlaid eggs taken from 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2$g 

poulets, form no inconsiderable item of this even- 
ing entertainment. I noticed but few women in 
the cafes, and the men as often as not had their 
hats on. A waiter would now and then throw 
a crust out to some doleful in-looker from the 
streets, when the recipient of the charity would 
go oif with a grateful * Gracias ! ' To add to the 
medley of murmurs by day and by night, quails 
and crickets kept in tiny cages send forth their 
cheerful voices and serve to elicit all the over- 
flowing tenderness for which the Spaniards and 
Italians have invented so many charming dimin- 
utives. How little does our stiff Anglo-Saxon 
tongue know of the caressing grace and melody 
of these terminations ! And how different is the 
point of view that will name a child Tears or 
Miracles or Thanks or Dangers, from that which 
delights in Sally Ann or Simon! As different 
as the * Apes of Tarshish ' that still run over Gib- 
raltar Rock are from one of the sturdy redcoats 
that protect them. 

* Teresa and four ducats can do nothing, but 
God, Teresa, and four ducats can do anything : ' 
a famous saying of one of the patron saints of 
Spain, that well illustrates two or three phases 
of Spanish character ; its boundless faith, its 
hope, and its charity. The energy which made 
the good abbess venture on founding a great 
convent at Toledo with only four ducats, has ut- 



26o SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

terly died out j or has it gone into the preter- 
natural brilhance with which they make their 
boots shine ? or passed into these midsummer 
flies which, in 1285, says the legend, stung to 
death forty thousand Frenchmen and twenty-four 
thousand horses, and in 1684 demolished an en- 
tire French army ? ^ 

Another writer has a pleasant chapter on the 
influence of tradition in Spanish life. In it he 
recounts many curious circumstances connected 
with Peninsula customs and habits. For exam- 
ple, he says that in the Budget of 1870 there was 
a chapter called the ' Charges of Justice.' This 
consisted of a collection of articles appropriating 
large sums of money for the payment of feudal 
taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom as 
a compensation for long extinct seignories. The 
Duke of Rivas got thirteen hundred dollars for 
carrying the mail to Victoria. The Duke of San 
Carlos draws ten thousand dollars for carrying 
the royal correspondence (!) to the Indies. Of 
course this service ceased to belong to these fam- 
ilies some centuries ago, but the salary is still 
paid. The Duke of Ahiiadovar is well paid for 
supplying the bato7i of office to the Alguazil of 
Cordova. The Duke of Csuna — one of the 
greatest grandees of the kingdom, a gentleman 
who has the right to wear seventeen hats in the 

^ Hare, Wanderings in Spain^ p. 49. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 26 1 

presence of the Queen — receives fifty thousand 
dollars a year for imaginary feudal services.-^ 

And this cheerful little comedy while Spain 
was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. 

An Englishman was once traveling in a train 
between Valencia and Tarragona with some 
Spanish women. One woman remarked to an- 
other how sweetly her baby was smiling in its 
sleep. * Yes/ she said, ' it is laughing at the an- 
gels, which it only can see.' ^I have such a buz- 
zing in my ears,' said an old woman to another. 
* It is the sound of a leaf,' she answered, ^falling 
from the Tree of Life.' And so they will go on 
poetically, saying that the tarantula was once an 
impudent woman so fond of dancing that she 
even went on with it when the Divine Master 
passed by ; hence she was turned into a spider 
with a guitar stamped on its back, and those it 
bit had to dance till they fainted : the daughter 
of Herodias, in Spanish legend, danced on the 
frozen waters of the Segre till she fell through 
and it cut off her head, which continued to dance 
by itself ; again, if a certain little bell associated 
with divine worship, is heard to tinkle, even at a 
theatre in the midst of a performance, actors and 
audience fall on their knees till the Sacrament it 
announces has been carried past. Spanish cus- 
tom speaks of the host as his Majesty, Thus, 
1 Hay, Castilian Days, p. 52. 



262 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

when, after a prayer, the consecrated wafer is 
placed in the mouth of a dying person, a priest, 
after a few minutes, approaches with a napkin, 
and asks ^ Ha pasado su Majestad ? ' (Has his 
Majesty gone down ?) As in England, in several 
ancient libraries, the books are chained to the 
cases, so in Spain a library is found now and then 
with its book-backs turned to the wall. Peri- 
winkles are not periwinkles, but ^the tears of 
Jesus Christ/ The same conservatism of habit 
which, since Edward II. 's time, compels the Sher- 
iff of London when he is sworn in, to count six 
horse-shoes and sixty-one nails in token of edu- 
cation, — counting at that time being a sign of 
culture, — in Spain used to impose a heavy fine 
on physicians who did not bring a priest to their 
patient on the second visit. Such was the un- 
certainty of medical practice in those days ! Eu- 
ropean sovereigns are all ' cousins,' and in Eng- 
land, whenever there is a coronation it falls to 
the lot of one of the Dymokes of Scrivelsby, clad 
in full armor and mounted on a charger, to ride 
through Westminster Hall, and three times throw 
down an iron gauntlet, challenging to mortal com- 
bat anybody who will dispute the right of the new 
sovereign to reign. So in Spain on similar occa- 
sions, Hay reports a strange custom in connec- 
tion with the Dukes of Medina Celi, who centu- 
ries ago laid claim to the succession. The duke 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 263 

living at the time protests at every new corona- 
tion, whereupon the court headsman immediately 
proceeds to the Medina Celi palace and threatens 
instant decapitation unless the duke signs a pa- 
per abdicating his rights to the throne of all the 
Spains. 

Spanish history has been epitomized as seven 
centuries of fighting and three thousand battles. 
The provinces of Spain were never harmonious 
— father against son and son against mother, 
till the strangest sorts of hatred were engen- 
dered ; and the uncertainties of to-day are largely 
connected with that vibratory theory of politics 
which from the very beginning has run through 
the minds of its inhabitants and converted the 
country into a sort of hereditary revolution. Here 
in Madrid, in the very teeth of the Puerta del 
Sol, the passer-by can stand and listen to pas- 
sionate controversies, on which the fate of em- 
pires would seem to turn, but which last hardly 
longer than the breath that utters them. The 
last bandit, the last vine-blight, the last swarm of 
locusts in Murcia or Old Castile, the ever-shift- 
ing panorama of parties (of which there are a 
baker^s dozen), the legs of the last dancer or the 
new theatre-combinations, will on occasion be 
quite as passionately discussed. 

Every traveler will be struck with the gay 
colors of the houses, — yellow, green, gray, pink, 



264 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

white, mauve. They are singularly fresh and 
new-looking. Under such a sky colors jut forth 
with extreme sharpness, and are preserved to 
a degree quite unknown in northern countries. 
Here long golden or rose-colored fagades covered 
with a multitude of moldings and balconies, with 
a quaint tower peeping over from behind, and 
a range of ancient dormers blinking at you like 
hooded owls, form most interesting interruptions 
to the straight lines one is accustomed to view in 
most new European capitals. Such color-fresh- 
ness communicates a cheerfulness to Madrid as 
far removed as possible from the dingy drizzle 
that oozes down from the Parisian eaves the year 
round. None of these Spanish houses are very 
elegantly furnished except those belonging to the 
highest nobility. The most charming Spanish 
house I was ever in was the one described at 
Aranjuez ; and even that confined itself wholly to 
the aesthetic side. In a land of no chimneys and 
no fires there cannot be much interior comfort. 
That greatest of luxuries, a true fireside, is un- 
known. 

To enjoy Spain some knowledge of the lan- 
guage is of course absolutely necessary. Fluent 
speaking acquaintance with colloquial Spanish is 
by no means easy of attainment, for there are 
many terms quite indispensable in every-day in- 
tercourse which are not found in literature. The 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 265 

literary Spanish is a highly finished and elabo- 
rated dialect, and while in five or six of the great 
provinces — the two Castiles, Estremadura, An- 
dalusia, and Aragon — what is known as * Span- 
ish ' is very generally spoken and often admirably 
spoken, even by peasants, the traveler who goes 
to Spain with a memory full of Cervantes, Que- 
vedo, Mendoza, and Leon will find himself sadly 
unintelligible at the very first railway station. It 
is a peculiarly insidious language to Italians ; 
for while the languages are just enough alike for 
the two nations to understand each other toler- 
ably, there are innumerable differences of detail, 
termination, application of words, and syntax. 
The rough Arabic-Gothic / is a standing trial to 
every individual, of whatever nationality, that at- 
tempts a conversation in Spanish. Toledo, Val- 
ladolid, Burgos, and Madrid are all well-known 
for the purity of their Spanish, like Coimbra 
among the Portuguese and Blois and Orleans 
in France. One must confess that the Castilian 
suffers in a comparison with the Tuscan, though 
the Spanish insist that the Italian is a * lady-lan- 
guage,' too dainty for men. A curious fact in 
the language is the number of meanings borne 
by each word — meanings, so to speak, riding in 
front, behind, and pillion-wise, all on the same 
horse. The far-fetched associations, too, which 
have filled so thoroughly figurative a language. 



266 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

are often very difficult to catch, and the constant 
sharp-shooting of abbreviated proverbs is as hard ' 
to make out as the * rubrica/ a royal flourish 
which the Spanish kings write in lieu of a name 
on public documents. It was a saying of Charles 
V. that Spanish was a language to speak with 
God. Perhaps the good king's apparition would 
be frightened out of its wits if it could listen to 
the present slang of Madrid. 

Whoever goes to Spain, says an Italian writer, 
will learn to pronounce with reverence the name 
of beans (garbanzos). Whatever abhorrence the 
Pythagoreans, following a sort of fastidiousness 
which prevents the Portuguese from uttering the 
word for dog^ may have had for this vegetable in 
ancient times, has turned into as special a pre- 
dilection among the non-Pythagorean Spaniards. 
One would like to have the dish pointed out — 
flesh, fish, or fowl — into which this leguminous 
omnipresence does not enter. People may talk 
of the Spaniards living on honey, snails, mush- 
rooms, and eggs ; but to these beans must be 
added in all the majesty of sovereignty and with 
all the rights of primogeniture. 

As iox puchero^ — imagine a whirlwind in a lar- 
der, with the result boiled in a huge pot, — and 
you will have some idea of this national dish. It 
is perhaps going too far to say that one would be 
looked upon as a scandalous drunkard who emp- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 26/ 

tied a bottle of wine at a meal in this country ; 
but the Spaniards, wine-drinkers though they be, 
are abstemious and are apt to stare at the for- 
eigner who drinks much. The ordinary table-wine 
is too much like acidulated blood for my taste, 
- — a thick, heavy, spurious Val de Penas^ strong 
enough to make the roots of your hair tingle. 
The Spaniards, who are themselves an animated 
fermentation, rarely drink to excess. * Mais c'est 
une vieille et plaisante question, si Tame du sage 
seroit pour se rendre a la force du vin,' says old 
Montaigne. 

The Palace shows in what a grand way the 
Catholic kings could expatiate when they had a 
chance. Some idea in general may be given of 
one part of it by mentioning that there is a school 
attached to educate the children of the servants. 
It is a truly magnificent pile, of vast extent, the 
most characteristic part of which is the roof, 
where roost a perfect covey of superannuated 
partridges in the shape of pensioners and inva- 
lids. They no doubt look down on the world 
from their perch with true Castilian hauteur — 
a perch to which, like Lamb's friend, they have 
retired on one joke and forty pounds a year. 
The building is not much over a hundred years 
old, but in that time the most astonishing accu- 
mulations have been made ; among the curiosities 
are pink and cream-colored horses ; coaches and 



268 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

State-carriages of every description, a single one 
of which cost seventy-five thousand dollars ; state- 
liveries ; clocks without odd or end ; and the 
most splendid collection of arms in Europe ; 
while arches, columns, balconies, courts, and sa- 
lons without name or number, disport themselves 
in and over its huge dimensions. The whole of 
this stupendous structure was occupied in the 
spacious times of good Queen Isabel. In the 
reign of King Amadeus most of it remained 
empty, to the infinite disgust of the Spaniards, 
who love a splendid extravagance and dearly 
cherish the good old Spanish vices. Amadeus 
took two or three little rooms and left the rest to 
be peopled by crimson-spotted flunkeys or their 
echoes. One of the king's predilections was for . 
Virginia tobacco. He was an insatiate reader of 
everything that had to do with himself or his 
policy. His subjects despised him because he 
was a simple gentleman and preferred an unat- 
tended saunter through the streets of his capital 
or a drive in the Buen Retiro to all the majesty 
of the throne of Ferdinand. They hated his 
queen because there was an evil rumor that she 
knew Greek, Arabic, astronomy, and mathemat- 
ics, which a Spanish queen had no business 
knowing ; and there was an added bitterness 
because she would not attend the bull-fight. 
One morning they packed their trunks and went 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 269 

home to Italy, fortunate enough to get off un- 
assassinated ; and that was Alfonso's red-letter 
day. Don Amadeus, the First and Last, was no 
more. 

* Charles V.,' reason the Spaniards,/ killed a 
bull with his own hands in the grand plaza of 
Valladolid ; Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, was a 
famous bull-fighter ; Don Sebastian of Portugal, 
and Philip IV. of Spain fought in the arena ; 
therefore why shan't we go to bull-fights and 
fight if we have a chance ? ' So, * we have tried 
to assassinate that king, therefore why not try to 
assassinate this one .^^ ' Perhaps King Amadeus 
escaped because he was so ugly. 

Shall I confess that I was not fortunate enough 
to see one of the great national sports in Madrid 
— a cock-fight? Palgrave, in his paper on the 
Philippine Islands, says it is unsettled whether 
the Malays got this sport from their Spanish con- 
querors, or whether the Spaniards imported it 
from the Philippines. The diabolism of it — 
apart from Sunday being the favorite day for the 
performance — is so purely horrible that it need 
not be dwelt upon, nor how the Malay (the Span- 
iard too, doubtless), when his house catches fire, 
is said to run for his game-cock before he does 
for his wife. The wretched creatures are made 
to tear each other to pieces by means of long 
steel gaffs, while an ecstatic crowd gloats around, 
and betting goes prosperously on. 



270 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

The Cock and the Bull form a large part of the 
Spanish story. 

In a quaint little canzonet on the Nativity of 
Christ the shepherds go out saying, * Adieu, Sir 
Ox ; adieu, Sir Mule, may God be with you ! ' 
which illustrates a sort of tenderness the Spanish 
have for these animals. 

Another quaint illustrative feature of popular 
habit or habitual modes of thought may be gath- 
ered from the following couplet forming an in- 
scription for a bridge in one of the remotest 
provinces : — 

* Detente aqui, caminante ; 

Adora la religion, 

Ama la Constitucion, 

Y luego pasa adelante. 

(O passer-by, detain thee here : 

Religion first adore ; 

The Constitution next revere, 

Then pass on as before !) ' 

There is no word more frequently on the lips of 
Spaniards, or more popular — for names of streets 
and squares — than Cojtstitiition, The familiarity 
has evidently bred contempt, for genuine consti- 
tutional government seems entirely unknown. 

One makes strange street acquaintance in a 
saunter through Madrid. First of all are the 
gorgeous nurses who have plucked the rainbow 
from the sky and cut it into gowns for themselves. 
The sole relic of costume to which we are accus- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2/1 

tomed is the penitentiary stripe ; therefore the 
more surprise at these Hebe-butterflies flitting 
about the sidewalks with great children in their 
arms, looking like gigantic hollyhocks. They 
come from the North, and, together with their 
infant charges, are the great patronesses of cara- 
mel sugar-sticks {azucarillos) and the confections 
called ' angel's hair/ 

It has been well said that Madrid is the thirst- 
iest city on the globe. Hence another pictur- 
esque element in street life, — the aguadores and 
aguadoras^ individuals that hawk the former and 
the latter rain about the thoroughfares, hoping 
that somebody will buy. A not very agreeable 
invitation to the dance is the sight of these indi- 
viduals administering comfort to their very dirty 
selves out of the glasses intended for Your Wor- 
ship. As a Frenchman wittily remarked, day 
and night the oxy oi fire ! fire I (matches) is an- 
swered by the cry of water ! 7vater ! in this fire- 
and-water ridden town. Then the rattan-sellers 
at the street-corners, the shrill wail of the women 
cr\dng newspapers, the blind fiddlers and gutter- 
pickers promenading the Alcala street, and the 
veterans of this, that, and the other war, stretched 
out on the pavement, covered with scars and 
medals, and invoking your compassion ; these 
lend no little enlivenment to a morning walk. 
Perhaps, as in Portugal, a huge, antique-looking 



2/2 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

chariot, drawn by oxen, may come along, having 
its axles rubbed with lemon-juice that they may 
screech the louder and scare off the ghosts at 
night. There are many beautiful shops too, in 
which, according to the old Catalan custom of 
using geese for watch dogs, the clerks seem 
placed to frighten off visitors. The bookshops 
are exceptionally full and frequent, and Irving, 
Ticknor, and Prescott occupy prominent places, 
while there is laudable store of European litera- 
ture. The contemporary writers, Hartzenbusch 
the dramatist, Breton de los Herreras, the comedy 
writer, Zorrilla the poet, Gayangos the Orientalist, 
Guerra the archaeologist, Amado de los Rios the 
critic ; the romance writers Becquer, Fernandez 
y Gonzalez, and Trueba ; the revolutionary poet, 
Quinta ; Espronceda, called the Spanish Byron ; 
Gallego, Delia Rosa, de Rivas, and many others, 
are abundantly represented. There is a very act- 
ive literary movement going on in Spain at the 
present moment, and a great deal of sound cult- 
ure exists in the circle that is settled in Madrid. 
Castelar is of course the hero of the hour, both 
in literature and politics, — a man of wonderful 
eloquence, financier, historian, critic, traveler, 
political economist, poet, and statesman ; but un- 
fortunately possessed of such rhapsodic tenden- 
cies that he forgets the critical faculty altogether 
and has become a voluptuary in rhetoric. To 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 273 

read his Recuerdos de Italia, is like finding one's 
self again among the more lyrical passages of 
Volney, Obermann, or Chateaubriand. 

Madrid is a great place for pictures : besides 
the National Museum, — one of the finest and 
largest collections in the world, — there are nine 
or ten private galleries, belonging to wealthy 
bankers and noblemen. Fourteen or fifteen li- 
braries are scattered through the town, none of 
them, perhaps, so complete as the Ticknor Li- 
brary at Harvard, which is acknowledged to be 
the best collection of works relating to Spanish 
literature in existence. Therefore, just as the 
American has to go to the British Museum to 
study American history, so the Spaniard, much 
as he hates a journey, will have to come to this 
country for information concerning his. The Na- 
tional Museum is unrivaled in Dutch and Flem- 
ish pictures, and in single masterpieces of Ital- 
ians and Spaniards. Velazquez, Goya, Murillo, 
and Zurbaran, can be seen in perfection in Ma- 
drid alone. The most exquisite Van Dycks and 
Titians hang on the walls. * To understand how 
it is Spain possesses such a gallery, we must re- 
call her as she was, — mistress well-nigh of the 
world. Italy, Naples, the Netherlands, England, 
were all at one period under Spanish rule or in- 
fluence, whilst she had at her command the 
wealth of the New World. Charles V. was a 
iS 



274 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

munificent patron of art ; his son, Philip II., in- 
herited his artistic tastes, and added greatly to 
the treasures collected by the emperor; whilst 
Philip IV,, whose portraits are so numerous in 
this gallery, contributed still more largely to the 
royal collection. He commissioned Velazquez 
to buy works of the great masters in Italy, and 
ordered the Spanish Ambassador in London to 
purchase a great part of the fine collection of 
our Charles I., forty-four of whose pictures are 
now in this gallery. The gift of a picture was a 
sure way to royal favor j and in the days of Span- 
ish ascendency, monarchs and subjects gladly 
proffered their gems of art to the Spanish king. 
Such is the history of this royal collection.' ^ 

Among the 2,000 pictures, there are 43 Titians, 
10 Raphaels, 34 Tintorettos, 25 Veroneses, 64 
Rubenses, 60 Tenierses, 65 Velazquezes, 46 Mu- 
rillos, and 2)^ Riberas. Such a gallery is indeed 
* a thing ensky'd and sainted.' The money value 
of a collection like this is incalculable ; what 
must be the artistic and aesthetic value ? Spain 
might almost pay her national debt with it. Even 
if one picked out the plums and left the rest, 
enough would remain to compare favorably with 
many a European gallery. We may esteem our- 
selves fortunate in this country if we can even 
purchase engravings and photographs of its mas- 
1 Tollemache, Spanish Towns and Spanish Pictures ^ p. 47. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 275 

terpieces. The long hall is beautifully lighted, 
and contains a rotunda, lateral galleries, and a 
basement and up-stairs. The amazingly compli- 
cated lock which shuts in this great collection is 
not the least of its curiosities. It looks almost 
as if a steam-engine were necessary to turn the 
key. The white-haired door-keeper is one of the 
most gracious specimens of his kind that I have 
ever met. He actually spoke not Ollendorff, but 
French, and smiled radiantly at each individual 
visitor as he entered. A catalogue — not with- 
out defects, as seen in the criticism on it in a re- 
cent Revista Contemporanea — has been lately 
issued. Many of the pictures are hung entirely 
too high, and cannot be seen to advantage. For 
its size and importance, there is no museum so 
unexplored as this. Many suppressed convents 
and public collections have contributed to it. 
* Radiance in archangels and grace in Madon- 
nas,' to quote Ruskin's phrase, may there be seen 
in abundance j and so far as likenesses of the 
Spanish kings are concerned, one cannot re- 
proach this gallery, as Carlyle did the galleries 
of Berlin. * The Berlin galleries, which are made 
up, like other galleries, of goat-footed Pan, Eu- 
ropa's Bull, Romulus's She-wolf, and the Correg- 
giosity of Correggio, contain, for instance, no 
portrait of Friedrich the Great.' Here they hang 
in unimaginable abundance, eight or ten a-piece 



2/6 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

now and then, — Charleses, Philips, Ferdinands, 
Medicis, Baltasars. I never remember to have 
been in a European museum which did not con- 
tain a Marie de Medici, and here she is, huge 
as ruff and farthingale can make her, — a sea of 
fat in point lace. Rubens, with his transcend- 
ent simper and naked Flemings, is in force : a 
painter who certainly succeeded better with sa- 
tyrs than with nymphs and graces, for he was a 
man of gross nature, and could paint tipsiness 
and impurity to perfection. I never saw one il- 
lumined-looking female face by him : and yet who 
could paint children more exquisitely ? * The 
splendid Fleming,' says Motley, * rushed in and 
plucked up drowning art by the locks, when it 
was sinking in the trashy sea of such creatures 
as the Luca Giordanos and Pietro Cortonas.' A 
Pompejan lamp is not a whit more suggestive 
than many a Danae or Venus of Titian and Ru- 
bens. And, as Longfellow says, who would have 
one of these hanging in his hall ? 

The museum forms a stately pile on one side 
of the Prado, probably the finest drive in Europe. 
There is not the radiance of verdure possessed 
by the Champs Elysees, nor the freshnesss and 
luxuriance of the English parks ; but in length, 
extent, and situation, the Prado excels them all. 
Here and there along it are spots which are fash- 
ionable or not, according to the caprice of the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 2// 

hour. The Buefi Retiro, a charming park, lies 
beyond. The city abounds in theatres, bull-rings, 
circuses, zarzuelas, cock-pits, and clubs. Barring 
the keen air, Madrid must be a fascinating resi- 
dence in winter, especially in carnival time. A 
wide, handsome, sunny, airy place, abounding in 
squares and promenades, every part of the Pen- 
insula is accessible from it, and it is possible to 
reach the French capital in a few hours, and with 
a single change of cars. Tram-ways penetrate 
the city in many directions, and meet in the Pu- 
erta del Sol, the centre of a star of streets which 
radiate thence. Though they collect fares rather 
frequently, the amounts are small, and the mules 
that are used make the trams spin along at a sig- 
nal pace. The city is well provided with cabs and 
fiacres, and the offices of the railways all have a 
series of omnibuses, which convey the passenger 
to and from the station for a mere song. This 
custom is general through Spain and Portugal. 
The ticket-offices are all grouped about the Pu- 
erta del Sol, without which life and soul of it 
Madrid would be eviscerated indeed. The sta- 
tions are literally besieged with caleches, insidi- 
ously named after the various hotels which they 
serve. Woe to you if you get into one of them 
without previous stipulation. At the station, 
every one has to take his turn in purchasing his 
ticket, superintended by a policeman, and every 



278 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

coin is duly rung and tested by the railway offi- 
cial on the marble slab provided for that purpose. 
Gold and silver — even copper — are freely re- 
jected by this Rhadamanthus, who is as careful 
and inflexible as a man should be, out of whose 
pockets Mephistopheles' * herrliche Lowenthaler ' 
have to come, in case false money has been 
handed in. Caution in money matters is a shin- 
ing virtue in this country, where national bank 
bills are scarcely taken outside the city of Ma- 
drid. Inn keepers and store-keepers are full of 
tricks, and gladly pass their useless coins on un- 
suspecting foreigners. Letters of credit are the 
easiest to get along with : Spanish bankers are 
proverbially polite ; and though you run constant 
danger, owing to the great number of church holi- 
days, of getting out of money, and having to wait 
inconveniently, you always get what you want in 
the end. An excellent habit it is to travel with 
a church calendar and holy-feast book in one's 
pocket. The intricate numbering of Spanish 
houses, and the obscure dens occupied by many 
Spanish business firms, render it quite difficult 
sometimes to find an address. 

' Portugal is a safe country ; there are no brig- 
ands ; the only thieves keep inns, and the only 
formidable beasts live in them.' I wish I could 
say the same of Spain. As to safety, two or three 
attacks on trains took place about the time of my 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 2/9 

journey. Spaniards, I was told, have a whimsical 
repugnance to traveling first-class in the same 
railway carriage with a foreigner ; as soon as a 
foreigner gets in, they get out, ^nd herd together 
in suffocating closeness, rather than run possible 
risks from alien fingers. Many a long ride to 
and from stations, at unheard of midnight hours, 
have I had to take, to keep the inconvenient ap- * 
pointments of the trains ; a fact which renders 
travel unnecessarily fatiguing and hazardous. As 
to inns, and those that keep them, the less said 
the soonest mended. Spanish apartments are 
like the earth that brought forth ' the living creat- 
ure after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing.' If 
the most conciliating cheapness can be any palli- 
ation for this state of things, then the cloak may 
be thrown over the multitudinous sins of board- 
ing-houses and resting-places in the land of the 
Cid. The traveler in this land is always the 
traveler militant, ever on the defensive, ever 
* glowering round the corner,' to use an odd 
Netherlandish phrase. If the patriotic Spaniards 
would rebel against this tyranny, and do with the 
inn-keepers as Latouche says the Lisbon people 
do with the ever-increasing dogs of that good 
town : * A net is drawn, on a dark night, across 
a leading street, and the dogs of a whole neigh- 
borhood driven to the spot ; as they become en- 
tangled in its meshes, a man kills them with a 



28o SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

blow on the head, and throws their bodies into a 
cart ; ' if the patriotic Spaniards, I say, would 
establish their nets in the Puerta del Sol and its 
purlieus, for example, and proceed as the prac- 
tical Portuguese do, I am sure the golden age 
would not be far off in Spain. 

One of the many manias which possessed the 
Spanish kings was a mania for clocks. Clocks 
big and clocks little, musical and non-musical 
clocks, mantel clocks and centre-table clocks, 
clocks in season and out of season, garnished 
their palaces and echoed through their apart- 
ments. And yet no Spanish king ever knew the 
time of day or night. Their morning was other 
people's bed-time, and their night was usually 
the world's morning. Hence the long list of 
groaning ambassadors who, knowing the Spanish 
punctilio, confused it with punctuality, and spent 
hours of their precious lives in antechambers 
awaiting audience of their Catholic majesties. 
And nobody ever had an engagement with these 
devout sovereigns who did not come to the con- 
clusion that the Spanish clocks, like their august 
possessors, were the slowest, stupidest, and most 
backward of their kind. The bewildered Bour- 
bons promenading among their clocks and yet 
oblivious to either the value or the flight of time, 
are good illustrations of the state of things in 
Spain. Everything is behind time and behind 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 28 1 

the times. Spanish dinners are later than any- 
body else's j Spanish newspapers are stale with 
yesterday's news ; the very passion of the people 
for late hours, late and long morning naps, late 
church hours and light disregard of early indus- 
try, shows that a special Providence has appointed 
certain nations to bring up the comfortable rear 
of civilization — Nations of the Evening — while 
their brethren are all a-flush with the future and 
the light of the morning far ahead. 

And what a charming specimen of the Nations 
of the Morning I found in James Russell Low- 
ell, the poet, critic, scholar, and statesman, who 
now waits on Don Alfonso for us at the Court 
of Madrid. He seemed almost an anachronism 
in the ancient Castilian city ; the busy, brilliant 
Yankee, full of our intensest Anglo-Saxon life, a 
man of many resources and many thoughts, no 
doubt, too, in those infinite leisures of Spanish 
life, thinking out one of the beautiful studies 
and criticisms which he has so lavishly given us 
in My Study Windows. Madrid is so plain and 
sunny in the cloudless Castilian air that — by 
way of exception to most Spanish cities — there 
is not the least trouble in finding an address, no 
matter how remote from the Puerta del Sol. The 
wayfaring Spaniard, too, is very polite, and, after 
informing you at great length of all the streets 
and turnings you are to traverse, bids your grace 



282 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

^go with God,' with a phrase that has come down 
from ancient times. In one of the many bright 
streets that run into the Prado — the Champs 
Elysees of Madrid — I found the United States' 
coat of arms blazoned over a door which I was 
not wrong in taking for that of the American 
Embassy. A cheerful, lightsome house, with mar- 
ble hall and steps, stained glass, subdued tones 
of wall and wainscot, and a charming and unac- 
countable absence of * business,' tobacco, shreds 
of paper, spittoons, and other paraphernalia ap- 
pertaining to the usual American office. One 
could see that here, at least, in all this broad 
Spanish peninsula, was culture. Here, too, one 
felt certain, could be found English books and 
transatlantic periodicals, — a redolence and aro- 
ma of that great outer life in which Spain takes 
so little part. A kind reception soon opened the 
way to a pleasant conversation, to which Mr. 
Lowell's humor and imagination lent no little 
charm. For a moment the visitor imagined he 
had made a mistake and found himself in the 
presence of the English minister, so thoroughly 
English is Mr. Lowell's appearance and accent. 
Is it usual for Bostonians to trill their r's and 
broaden their ^'s quite so much as the author 
of the Biglow Papers does t But we will not ac- 
cuse so sincere and distinguished a man of af- 
fectation. Half a life-time spent at Harvard in 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 283 

drilling French consonants and Italian vowels 
into beginners has, no doubt, left its impress, 
and transformed, if not transfigured, Mr. Lowell's 
pronunciation. He is a fine Spanish scholar, 
and his Harvard lectures on Cervantes, no less 
than on Dante, are well-known. He takes the 
greatest interest in the quaint life around him, 
and is a studious observer of Spanish politics. 
The Spaniards, said he, have reached a condi- 
tion of anarchy politically to which our rotation- 
in-office system is rapidly bringing us. Govern- 
ment succeeds government with unpleasant haste, 
and" one round of ofiice-seekers after another is 
eating up the country, reminding one of the 
proverb about the climate of the north of Spain, 
— * ten months hibernal and two months infer- 
nal.' 

The conversation turned on the curious cus- 
toms and observances of peninsular life, the 
grave courtesy of the people, their Oriental ex- 
travagance of expression, their habit of dating 
their letters from your house (which Mr. Lowell 
says is dying out), and the serious inconvenience 
of admiring anything belonging to your host. 
Apropos of the latter, Mr. Lowell told a story of 
an American admiral which may bear repeating. 
The admiral had just arrived with the fleet at 
one of the Mediterranean ports, and a hospita- 
ble Spaniard, learning of his arrival, sent him an 



284 SPAIN IN PROFILE. \ 

invitation to dinner, which was accepted with 
Jonathanian readiness. Dinner over, the party 
adjourned to the drawing-room, where Admiral 
Jonathan, after the fashion of his country, began 
to admire first one thing and then another, es- 
pecially one object of great beauty and costliness, 
thinking all the while merely to compliment his 
host on his taste. ' It is at the disposition of 
your grace,' replied the courteous host. Stares, 
polite excuses, refusals, apologies, proved vain ; 
the object was packed up and sent to the ad- 
miral's ship, who, happy in the possession of a 
rare work of art, took no thought for the morrow 
when — the Spaniard sent for it ! This empty 
phrase — ' at the disposition of your grace ' — is 
all that survives of a once princely custom. One 
of the Spanish kings gave Charles I. the jewel 
of his picture-gallery because he had carelessly 
admired it. The habit of presenting people 
with any object they admired was once universal, 
and still survives — as General Grant can tell us 
— among the Mussulmans of Constantinople. 
Things are sent home to you, but you are ex- 
pected to return them or send something of equal 
value. The most cordial invitations are given to 
dinner which all the codes of all the Castilians 
forbid you to accept. They are invitations to 
those Barmacide feasts in which the Spanish im- 
agination delights — culinary castles in the air. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 285 

The acceptance of such an invitation would pro- 
voke a scene both ludicrous and distressing. The 
Spaniard means to be polite, and in his flowing, 
flowery way, he is j but be sure you have your 
stock of reserves and reticences and engagements 
on hand. There is no dinner at the Spanish 
home ; the hostess has but one gown, and that 
she sleeps in j and all the market-money evapo- 
rates through the end of the host's innumerable 
cigarettes. 

Mr. Lowell has a high opinion of Don Al- 
fonso and says he is far from being a specimen 
of royal cram. He was particularly struck with 
the originality and independence of his views on 
the masterpieces of Spanish literature, which he 
had evidently read and studied with care. The 
young king is popular — a popularity which he 
owes largely to his poor young queen, who so 
lately passed away. No matter how infamous 
their deeds, Spanish kings and queens are nearly 
always idolized by their subjects. Personal pop- 
ularity has been their one solace — clocks ex- 
cepted — and Alfonso, who is hardly twenty, 
comes in for his share. 

Mr. Lowell spoke with great indignation of 
the contemptible uses to which American minis- 
ters to foreign countries are put by their pere- 
grinating countrymen ; and added that our repre- 
sentative at a certain great continental court was 



286 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

literally no more than a valet de place. His busi- 
ness was to tell people when the museums were 
open, what theatres to go to, who were the swell 
milliners and tailors, and when they could be 
presented at court. This is a fact. One half 
the time of these august beings is spent running 
about with old women, showing * governor ' this 
or ' general ' that the * sights ; ' purchasing opera- 
tickets, peradventure, or hunting up names and 
addresses at the various bankers'. The other 
half is spent in drawing the salary. 

In an easy and pleasant manner a half hour 
slipped quickly away. Mr. Lowell talks admira- 
bly, but one can hardly recognize in this hearty, 
healthy, exuberant man, the poet of exquisite 
nerves and fancies, the lover of Chaucer and 
Dryden, the imaginative and eloquent writer who 
has told us with so much grace so many things 
old and new. His spiritualities and subtleties 
he casts like a fine spray over that larger self 
which is seen in his writings, while he reserves 
for more common uses the rich and strong flavors 
of a unique personality. Touch him anywhere, 
and there is an anecdote ; life for him is a recol- 
lection, a witticism, a line of poetry, an epigram, 
a camel's hair brush with which to paint con- 
versation with multifarious incident. His inti- 
mate friends must, one conjectures, enjoy a rare 
treat in intercourse with so choice a spirit. He 



11 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 28/ 

cannot fail to inhale the fine poetry of Andalu- 
sian and Castilian life, and one day we shall 
have it returned in some work of peculiar grace. 
It is a comfort to have ourselves represented by 
such a man of pure genius and quiet literary 
force, after all the Cushings and Sickleses of the 
latter days. It keeps fresh the traditions of 
Washington Irving, Taylor, and Bancroft, and in- 
fuses an element of poetry into the arid air of 
diplomatic intercourse, an element which cannot 
fail to refine ; besides, it shows that literature is 
still a power and wins its recognition even at 
Washington. 



XIII. 

And they produce a host of books, written by Musasus and Orpheus, 
children, as they say, of the Moon and the Muses, which form their rit- 
ual. — Plato, Rep. ii. 365. 

There is a certain eloquence in figures, when 
applied to Spain. -^ Without going quite so far as 
the Greek epigram, that says, ' All things are 
known to him that holdeth Number,' — a for- 
mula which a well-known mathematical journal 
has adopted as its Las date esperanza^ — there is 
still a great deal of truth in the saying. Whether 
the Spaniards are special arithmeticians or not, 
it would be hard to say ; but there is hardly a 
nation against which numbers count so tellingly. 
Every year the official annuary makes a pitiable 
revelation ; every year there are the confessions 
of some statistical St. Augustine. The length 
and breadth of the land are annually harrowed 
by the remorseless Guia Oficial de Espana, or 
the Anuario Estadistico, publications which en- 
ter into all sorts of miscellaneous details, and 
read like the reports of a lazaretto. All the hemp 
of the Philippine Islands would, according to 
1 The figures in this chapter are approximate. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 289 

many Spaniards themselves, hardly suffice to 
hang the rogues that prey on the revenues, fill the 
government offices, and cry ^ Viva el rey ' with 
boundless enthusiasm every time a new Alfonso 
or a new Amadeus lands at Barcelona ; and, it 
might be added, all the sugar of Cuba is hardly 
sufficient to sweeten the annual pill of ruinous 
taxes, government monopolies, huge civil lists, 
pence for the grandees and pounds for the prin- 
cesses. In the last hundred years the popula- 
tion has hardly doubled ; the nine millions of 
1768 are about the eighteen millions of 1878. 
Within this period there are years in which the 
population absolutely fell off, or, if there was in- 
crease at all, so slow and laborious an increase 
that it made no impression on the statisticians, 
and remained unregistered in their contributions 
to economical science. As far back as 1842, the 
population was only three times that of the State 
of New York now. Ninety Spaniards per English 
square mile were all the most ardent census-takers 
could muster in i860. This is a meagre show- 
ing indeed for a kingdom with nearly 180,000 
square miles of continental land. Our popula- 
tion was in 1870 nearly ten times what it was in 
1790, or as many times as four millions (1790) 
will go into thirty-eight millions (1870). Our 
census has been taken but nine times, while it 
would be difficult to say how many times the 
19 



290 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Catholic kings have tormented themselves and 
their subjects with the Israelitish hankering after 
numbers, and the vain hope of immense increase 
within abnormally short periods. Madrid has the 
population of Brooklyn, and is much the largest 
city; while in 1874 there were but four cities 
(Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville) that 
had over a hundred thousand inhabitants. Such 
famous cities as Malaga, Valladolid (the *rich' of 
Spanish legend), Murcia, Saragossa, Granada, 
and Cadiz have to be left entirely out of these 
chosen four. It would hardly be fair to compare 
the slow growth of these old historic cities with 
the marvelous growth that gave us in 1870 four- 
teen cities with 100,000 inhabitants and over, and 
that showed Michigan in 1820 to have about 
9,000 people, and over a million in 1870. Prov- 
ince by province, as far as they go, the eleven 
ancient ' kingdoms ' composing the aggregate of 
Spain will compare very favorably with as many of 
our States in population, not in area ; where they 
have eleven, with a handful of islands, we had 
thirty-seven in 1870, not to mention the ten terri- 
tories, any one of which, perhaps, might pocket 
the whole peninsula. Andalusia (17,000 square 
miles, about the size of Switzerland) has the 
population of Virginia before West Virginia was 
filched ; Old Castile (41,000 square miles, larger 
than all Portugal, and twice the size of the Neth- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 29 1 

erlands) is not quite so populous as New York ; 
the provinces of Granada, Valencia, and Galicia 
would compare favorably in population with In- 
diana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Massachusetts, 
each of them somewhat exceeding a million. Up 
to 1820 Virginia had always taken the lead in 
population among the States ; so Old Castile, the 
special battle-ground of the Cid, and the prov- 
ince celebrated in his early romantic story for a 
thousand mythical and legendary incidents, seems 
long to have had the ascendency in mere multi- 
tude, if not in positive force. The nearly eight 
millions of our increase between i860 and 1870 
would represent half the senores and senoras that 
disport themselves in the Spanish cities, and think 
* La Espaha es todo ; ' and if one added to these 
the incidental eight millions of foreigners that 
have landed on our shores during the last fifty 
years, almost the entire population of the puis- 
sant realm of Alfonso would be approached. 

Again, take the matter of salaries and civil 
lists. Alfonso's individual civil list amounts to 
nearly a million and a half of dollars ; the four 
infantas get $160,000 among them; $200,000 or 
so go to the royal refugees, who spend their lei- 
sure and their money in building palaces in Paris. 
Two millions go to the relatives of the king, the 
last of the sixteen kings who, since the founda- 
tion of the united Spanish monarchy, in 1512, 



292 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

have, with an interval or two of republics (1868, 
1869, i^73> i^74)> been on the throne of Spain. 
How niggardly look our vice - president's ten 
thousand dollars, and the chief executive's fifty 
thousand ; while compare the White House with 
the Hapsburg and Bourbon palaces ! The House 
of Bonaparte and the House of Savoy did not 
stay long enough to make their mark on the ar- 
chitecture of the country. 

The five kings of the House of Hapsburg 
began with Charles I. (with three Philips sand- 
wiched between) and ended with Charles H., in 
1665. The eight Bourbons stand by themselves, 
or might be put side by side with the eight Bour- 
bons who from the time of Henry IV. to the 
time of Louis Philippe, leaving twenty years for 
First Republic and Empire, sat on the throne 
of France. But altogether the most important 
periods in P'rench and Spanish history were those 
periods when their legitimate kings were visiting 
foreign watering-places. 

The reformed or transformed Spanish consti- 
tution of 1876 (a year after the date of Alfonso's 
accession) is quite the most recent experiment in 
constitutions by articles and clauses. The three- 
score years and ten of the patriarch are exceeded 
by the nearly four-score rules of the constitu- 
tional monarchy, the constitution for which is, so 
far as the glitter of phraseology and the glow 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 293 

of generalization are concerned, quite a papier- 
mache constitution. The King is the Executive, 
and the legislative power rests in King and 
Cortes. Our Senate and House of Representa- 
tives are paralleled by their Senate and ' Con- 
gress ; ' but we have no such classification of 
senators which, since the Constituent Assembly 
of 1876, has applied Darwinism to politics, and 
* selected ' the higher body of Spanish represent- 
atives. Our purely elective principle is unknown 
to Spain, for Spain has senators by their own 
right, life-senators, like Irish peers, and elective 
senators. Hereditary grandees, with an income 
of $12,000; the king's sons; admirals of the 
navy ; captains-general of provinces (correspond- 
ing remotely to our governors of states) ; the 
nine archbishops ; the patriarch of the Indies ; 
and the presidents of the council of state, su- 
preme court, and court of accounts of the realm, 
are senators in their own right. As usual with 
European constitutions modeled more or less 
after the English, the right of dissolution and 
convocation of Parliament dwells in the king. 
Elective senators hold for five years ; half the 
whole number constituting this branch of the 
upper house has to be renewed within the same 
periodical limit, and the whole when Parliament 
has been dissolved. Groups of 50,000 souls send 
each one deputy, named in certain electoral jun- 



294 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

tas, to the ^ congress/ or popular body of the 
Parliament. The crown nominates the loo life- 
senators, paralleled to some extent by the 75 life- 
senators out of the 300 in the French assem- 
bly ; certain bodies called state corporations and 
those who pay the largest contributions are enti- 
tled to elect the 130 elective senators ; while the 
rest are those fixed and motionless bodies which 
we see in the English House of Lords, and de- 
pend for their places on what is called * their 
own right.' 

Many travelers note the contrast between the 
admirable self government of the provinces, dis- 
tricts, and communes, and the general corrup- 
tion, incompetency, and feverishness of the cen- 
tral circle at Madrid. The Spanish fueros^ or 
local charters, are amongst the most ancient in 
Europe, and show the early period at which local 
self government and municipal autonomy were 
fostered and developed in Spain. These local 
administrations are singularly jealous of the im- 
perial Walhalla at Madrid, — a collection of de- 
ceased functionaries, already rendered harmless 
by the death of their political influence, and en- 
gaged for the most part in waging warfare with 
shadows. The system of these local administra- 
tions is very excellently arranged : first, a com- 
munity of at least sixty persons elects an aywita- 
miento^ or board of aldermen, numbering from four 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 295 

to eight-and-twenty, over whom a mayor or alcalde 
presides, assisted by his deputies. This board is 
elected every two years, and has complete con- 
trol over communal and municipal taxation and 
the department of local justice. It elects the 
mayor annually, whose executive functions we 
have an edifying example of in Cervantes' La 
Jitanilla. Then communal life finds another res- 
ervoir into which to flow, and that is the provin- 
cial parliaments, an important factor in adminis- 
trative and representative life in Spain. The 
various ayuntamientos elect the members of these 
country legislatures, which meet every year, and 
are vested with great powers and privileges, guar- 
antied by the imperial parliament. Everything 
relating to the government and administration of 
the provinces, with their inner circles of com- 
munes, is in general in the hands of these par- 
liaments and aytmtamientos. The Madrid lu- 
minaries shine equally on the just and on the 
unjust, and exercise a sort of transcendental ju- 
risdiction and supervision over the general and 
permanent interests of the state. The new con- 
stitution has interfered as little as possible with 
the staid and equable functions of these old-fash- 
ioned representative bodies, in which Spain finds 
her chief strength. Their existence from ancient 
times has made the Spaniards the intense politi- 
cians they are, and many a name which has shed 



296 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

lustre over the national history began to twinkle 
in the provincial assemblies. 

In naval affairs our one admiral, one vice-ad- 
miral, and eleven rear-admirals are offset in Spain 
by one captain-general of the fleet and twenty ad- 
mirals. The ships are manned by conscription, 
chiefly from districts along the coast, and are 
numerous and powerful for a country so deeply 
in debt. Our army, commanded by its general, 
lieutenant-general, three major-generals, and half 
a dozen brigadiers, is ludicrously small when 
compared with the large forces officered by the 
five captain-generals, sixty lieutenant-generals, 
one hundred and thirty-one major-generals, and 
two hundred and thirty-eight brigadiers of the 
Spanish army. The officials of the Spanish 
army form an army in themselves, not to mention 
the titular dignitaries, effulgent in lace and gold, 
who dazzle the popular imagination and keep up 
the silken memories of the past. But then there 
is a force of one hundred and eighty thousand 
men, rank and file, to officer, which accounts 
somewhat for the abnormal growth of titles. 
Four years' service in the permanent army is re- 
quired of every Spaniard over twenty ; then comes 
the active reserve, composed of those young men 
who, omitting the four years of active service, are 
beyond the years determined by law for the per- 
manent organization ; the second, or sedentary, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 29/ 

reserve is composed of those who have served 
effectively for four years, unless they desire to 
adopt the soldier's profession permanently, when 
they are allowed to do so within certain limits. 
At twenty-eight a Spaniard, after serving eight 
years in the active or the reserve force, is free 
from military service, as the Germans are, bar- 
ring the Landwehr and Landsturm service, re- 
quired in emergencies. Habits of idleness are 
undoubtedly generated by this turn-about fashion 
of military organization. Idling in barracks, 
service in dissipated Mediterranean towns, con- 
tact as observers merely with the great spectacu- 
lar pageant of large cities, and easy day-dreaming 
along the Sierras with the ostensible object of 
crushing out brigandage infallibly lead to moral 
and physical degeneracy ; and quantum mutatus 
ab illis comes to one's thoughts on comparing the 
gigantic armor of the Armeria at Madrid with 
the pigmies that guard it outside. 

Perhaps there is no country so solidly Roman 
Catholic as Spain. The whole country adheres 
to this religion in a lump, save a leaven of some 
three-score thousands of other faiths, like the six 
hundred thousand Protestants of France. Per- 
haps the Pyrenees have more to do with it than 
is generally acknowledged, for it was but recently 
that the great transit-roads now in operation 
were drilled through these ihighty barriers, and 



298 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

a little light from without illumined the Stygian 
murkiness of the country. And perhaps the con- 
centrated type of Spanish Catholicism is due to 
this isolation. At all events, prelates innumera- 
ble infest the country. While populous England 
has but two archbishops and twenty-eight bishops, 
thinly populated Spain has Dante's mystic num- 
ber of nine archbishops, with nearly five times 
that number of bishops. Cathedral and college 
priests and dignitaries swarm. The monks in the 
country not quite a hundred years ago would peo- 
ple a town of sixty thousand inhabitants, the nuns 
another of thirty thousand, and the inquisitors, 
big and little, a village of twenty-five hundred. 
In all, the number would equal the present entire 
population of Louisville. The swarming con- 
fessionals, the uneasy consciences, the self-tor- 
menting religious life of the country, called this 
myriad brood into existence, and put it down sta- 
tistically on the registers of the kingdom precisely 
as we find it for the year 1787, when quite dif- 
ferent things were doing in this country. The 
' high-priest of this ghostly metaphysics ' is the 
Archbishop of Toledo, who at times thunders 
transcendently from his great cathedral, and at- 
tracts an attention almost equal to the Holy 
Father himself. The established church is of 
course maintained by the state, which binds itself 
through the constitution to keep up the worship 



I 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 299 



and the ministers of the Roman Catholic religion, 
and entirely lacks the liberality with which the 
French constitution provides for the maintenance 
of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants alike. Prot- 
estant worship, if not done absolutely by stealth, 
like religious worship in the times of the Cata- 
combs, is entirely private, and cannot be publicly 
announced. Forty years ago conventual estab- 
lishments were suppressed, it is to be hoped for- 
ever, and their property reverted to the nation. 
* The mediaeval notion of the church as a political 
estate, with pomps, honors, and powers,' has thus 
vanished, and all the vast housings and hospitali- 
ties of mediaeval ecclesiasticism have now been 
comfortably converted into untransferable public 
debt certificates bearing interest at the rate of 
three per cent. The churches and parsonages 
as the guardians of the remaining spiritualities 
of the kingdom are exempted from this conver- 
sion. 

Most intimately connected with the church is 
the astonishing condition of things in educational 
matters. 'It is not good for man to learn,' has 
been the precept of the Spanish educators ; and 
with such diffidence and delicacy have educa- 
tional methods been pressed, and with such mod- 
esty and bashfulness received, that the kingdom 
is still in extremest ignorance. One of the many 
immoralities which women were not to practice 



300 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

was learning to read and write ; and with such 
rigor and felicitous success was this prohibition 
inculcated, that in i860 there were only about 
seven hundred thousand women out of nearly 
seven and a half millions in the whole kingdom 
able to read and write. The ignorance of the 
men was not quite so monstrous ; yet thirty years 
ago only two millions out of the total population 
could even read, and in some provinces fourteen 
out of fifteen were totally ignorant. Here, then, 
is a veritable paradise for Lindley Murray, Web- 
ster's spelling book, and the Clarendon press ! 
In i860 science had one hundred and forty-one 
devotees in the higher institutions of the country, 
medicine about a thousand, law nearly four thou- 
sand, and theology about three hundred ; admi- 
rable showing in a population of nearly thrice six 
millions ! The ' science ' is annually exhibited in 
the miraculous doings of the priests, the law in 
the interminable controversies of the courts, and 
the medicine in carrying round a gold-headed 
cane as insignia of the ^Esculapian art. 

While in fifty years our railway system has 
grown from twenty- three miles in 1830 to over 
eighty thousand miles in 1878, the State of Illi- 
nois alone had a system in 1875 nearly double 
that of all Spain in 1877 (three thousand six 
hundred miles). Lobbyism is certainly in the as- 
cendant in Spain, for nearly all the railways are 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 3OI 

what Anglo-Indian politicians call ^ guarantied/ 
and receive subventions from the government. 
Private individuals and companies own them ex- 
clusively, and nearly every town of any importance 
is connected vv^ith one or the other of them. They 
have some two thousand post-offices to our two- 
score thousand ; while the four-score million let- 
ters which passed through theirs in 1876 stand 
in rather singular juxtaposition with the seven 
hundred millions passing through ours the year 
after. Twenty thousand miles will quite cover 
the length of their telegraph-wires, while six times 
that number will hardly cover the length of wires 
in the United States. The foreign and govern- 
mental dispatches embrace nearly half the mes- 
sages sent by telegraph in Spain ; private tele- 
graphing seems a luxury, and is comparatively 
little resorted to. 

The country is crushed by an overwhelming 
public debt, — nearly three billions of dollars two 
years ago. It broods over the land like a thun- 
der-cloud, ready to burst at any moment and 
scatter ruin far and near. Deficit after •deficit 
is the sad tale of the Spanish budget year after 
year. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a 
day as the cost of a civil war indefinitely pro- 
longed soon brought the debt to the enormous 
figures it now occupies in the national ledgers ; 
everything seems verging to an abysm of repudi- 



302 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ation. Spain can only borrow at frightful rates of 
interest, and with imminent peril of doubling the 
debt in a short period. The ten million dollars' 
worth of wine which she sends England annually 
is but a drop in this immeasurable bucket. Her 
entire amount of -imports and exports w^ould not 
much exceed the trade balance of exports alone 
in our favor for the year 1878. Where, then, is 
money to come from with which to extinguish 
these obligations ? England, France, and the' 
United States all have enormous resources ; but 
Spain ? One can appreciate and sympathize with 
the despair of the Spanish minister of finance 
when he pathetically approaches this subject. 
There is plenty of taxation, direct and indirect, 
but there seems to be an impassable gulf between 
revenue and expenditure never yet bridged over 
by any Spanish cunning. The unctuous Isabel 
could scatter a quarter of a million dollars in a 
single visit to Andalusia ; and that will suggest 
precisely where much of the money has gone, — 
cultivating popularity is a good old Spanish vice, 
and cultivating fields is not. Expenditure bears 
the proportion to revenue of 32 to 27. 

Still, there is yet hope for poor old empty 
Spain, with two such glorious wings as the Phil- 
ippines in the East and Cuba in the West to 
keep her buoyant. And then the Canary Islands 
have a perennial song for the ancient mother. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 303 

The Philippines are twice as populous as Switz- 
erland, and have an area much greater than Eng- 
land and Wales. Cuba is a good deal larger 
than Ireland ; and Porto Rico is one fourth the 
size of Belgium. The special wealth of Porto 
Rico seems to be in slaves, which in 1875 were 
not far below the number in the most flourishing 
period of ancient Attic slavery. While Portugal 
has abolished slavery throughout her possessions, 
Spain still clings to it. As, for mere revenue, 
one would rather be Duchess of Lancaster or 
Duke of Cornwall than Queen of England or 
Prince of Wales, so the Cuban planter, in mere 
opulence and voluptuousness, is generally far be- 
fore the much-envied Spanish grandee. A peep 
into a grandee's house is occasionally a rather 
dismal spectacle : all his ancestors hang in the 
Madrid picture-galleries, all his furniture is in the 
art museums, all his lackeys are in the army, and 
he himself is tottering on the verge of bank- 
ruptcy. Everything wears a second-hand look. 
Many of them can say in the words of their 
national hero, in his bitter reply to Don Al- 
fonso : — 

* Y de lo que hube ganado 

Vos fice senor y dueno, 

Non me lo confiscaredes 

Vos, ni viiesos consejeros, 

Que mal podredes tollerme 

La facienda que non tengo ! ' 

El Cid, cviii. 



304 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

A great change has taken place in Spain since 
Bryant's visit in 1857/ when there were but one 
hundred and forty miles of railway in the king- 
dom, with projected lines to Lisbon, Bordeaux, 
Barcelona, and Cadiz. All these lines and many 
others have been built, and one may now go 
from Paris to Lisbon with but two changes of 
trains, — one at Irun, and the other in Madrid. 
Decent railway stations, however, really do not 
exist in the peninsula. In those happy times of 
twenty years ago the queen would go out at six 
o'clock in the evening to take her morning walk ; 
and as for dining before ten o'clock in the even- 
ing, or retiring before three at night, it was quite 
impossible. Piety and dissoluteness went har- 
moniously together : — 

' Nam, fatebimur verum, 
Dulces fuistis ; ' 
and Isabel consoled herself by appointing this or 
that archbishop her private confessor. We have 
no reason to think that there was any such admir- i 
able plainness of speech between them as Gil 
Bias used to his friend the Barber on the occa- 
sion of his reading the sonnet. The scandal of 
this memorable reign has left an abiding impres- 
sion. 

* Whatever Aristotle and all the philosophers 
may say, there is nothing equal to tobacco,' was 
1 Letters of a Traveller. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 305 

a saying of Moliere's ; but will it be believed 
that good cigars are easier to get in New York or 
London than in Spain ? All the odds and ends 
of chopped Christendom go to make up the 
cigarritos which form so essential a part of na- 
tional existence in the peninsula, and various 
are the diseases chronicled by the doctors as en- 
gendered by the indulgence. If ' aiilking other 
people's minds was a characteristic of Goethe,' 
filching from other industries is a characteristic of 
the tobacco industry here. Twenty-five dollars a 
hundred is no very exceptional price for a good 
cigar ; while the vanilla, opium, or other scenting 
or stimulating mixtures in which they are steeped 
give rise to innumerable grades of prices. 

From the Pyrenees on the Spanish side, and 
from the hills of Galicia and Asturias in the 
northwest, numbers of crystalline streams flow 
down abounding in salmon, while at any Med- 
iterranean town excellent sea-fish are found. 
Fish should certainly be procurable in great 
quantities where Lent is so rigorously observed, 
and the whole population fasts once a week. 
Everybody knows what great delicacies the red 
and white legged partridges of Spain are ; while 
the Mediterranean marshes in the east and south- 
east are, in season, full of ducks. Woodcock, 
snipe, hares, sandpipers, deer, and wolves are 
abundant in certain localities. The remoter 



306 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Sierras are said to contain plenty of roebucks, 
chamois, and wild goats ; but I will not vouch 
for the astounding number of ducks (8,000 to 
10,000) said sometimes to be brought down by 
five or six guns in one month round Gibraltar. 

The dances, the lotteries, the bull-fights, the 
costumes, the festivals, have all given rise to 
many a locution difiicult to understand without 
some special knowledge of the provinces, the 
home circle, and society such as we find it a- 
saunter through Spain from May to November. 
Everything is permeated with the spirit of the old 
gallantry; even the ladies' garters are covered 
with embroidered inuendoes and souvenirs of a 
frolic imagination. A good deal of landed pro- 
prietorship is said to have grown out of prizes in 
the lotteries, — a universal fever encouraged by 
the state, insatiable of the earnings of the poor, 
and two or three times a month putting the en- 
tire kingdom on the rack of expectation. There 
is considerable revenue to the state accruing 
from the drawings, but the misery to the unlucky 
blank-holders is not to be described. 

A Spanish hidalgo who can arrange his winter 
cloak in the orthodox seventeen different ways 
may call himself finished in the art of personal 
decoration ; but one should hardly take advan- 
tage of his proverbial politeness by doing what 
Dumas, in his Paris a Cadiz ^ I think, said he 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 307 

did : by simply admiring what his caballero friends 
had on from time to time, he was presented with 
the individual pieces of a rich and complete cos- 
tume ! The streets, full of such cloaked and 
sombreroed figures, certainly have an interesting 
mediaeval aspect ; while the satin, silk, or black 
lace mantilla, worn shopping or going to mass by 
the women, gives a piquancy to the street un- 
known in other European cities. I saw but few 
white lace veils, which are reserved for grand oc- 
casions, — such occasions as Desaugiers wittily 
describes in his Inconveniences of being Rich. 
No Tanagra figurines, exquisite as are these 
lately discovered specimens of Greek genre art, 
can flirt a fan more daintily than a Spanish girl, 
from the fan which is a delicate landscape, a 
miniature comedy, or a painted love-song in it- 
self, to the fans arabesqued with steel on radii of 
sandal-wood or ivory. The cry of the wandering 
fan-seller soon becomes one of the familiarities of 
the Spanish open-air experience. He generally 
carries his fans along with knives and matches. 
Every month, nay, almost every week, has its 
verbenas^ veladas^ festas, or fairs, each with its 
pilgrimage, its holy vigil, its procession of con- 
fraternities, its blessing of mules and donkeys, 
its turkey-killing, its sending of bonbons or bou- 
quets on birthdays, or its apotheosis of pastry- 
cook shops into illuminated bazaars of Christmas 



308 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

cakes. It is a matter of difficulty not to be born 
on a saint's day. 

*The toilsome way and long, long league to 
trace ' is somewhat alleviated by the trains of 
muleteers and their mules, which Bedouinize 
through the remoter parts of Spain, and permit 
a traveler to join them for safety and society. 
The ancient high-roads are admirably kept up, 
but one soon, with Bryant, begins to long for Dr. 
Piper or Walter Scott, or some other lover of 
trees, to reclothe this amber denudation, and re- 
convert the nation from the silly notion that trees 
harbor birds that destroy the crops, forsooth. It 
is part of the humor of the past that travelers in 
Spain, before starting, used to call in a priest for 
absolution, a doctor for the final dose of medi- 
cine, and a notary to make their wills. Trav- 
eling is now tolerably safe, especially in the com- 
pany of the muleteers, who are frequently jolly 
fellows, and, though entirely guiltless of reading 
or writing, are full of wit, sense, and helpfulness. 
They do not, like the Arabs, swear by the ' wind,' 
the * wood,' or ^ the honor of the Arabs,' but by 
the saints and martyrs, and with astounding co- 
piousness and ingenuity. Oaths are nearly al- 
ways ungrammatical, and those of the Spanish 
muleteers are peculiarly so. Being in their com- 
pany for a few days is like being in the company 
of Congreve's, Farquhar's, or Wycherly's come- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 309 

dies once more. These trains move as lazily as 
the currents of the five or six canals, which draw 
their long-drawn length through the land, and 
vivify certain kiln-like parts of it. Inland naviga- 
tion, however, languishes, in spite of the large 
rivers which, with their hundreds of tributaries, 
flow through the country, sometimes, like the Ta- 
gus, for a distance of six hundred miles. And in 
a region where there are more fossil ferns than 
living ones, and more petrified than actual vege- 
tation, no very highly developed agricultural sys- 
tem can be found ; and where land which has 
borne a crop of wheat is left fallow instead of 
being cultivated with clover and grasses, trees 
are supposed to produce malaria, and other na- 
tional idiosyncrasies come into play, no very 
great receptivity of ideas prevails, nor can any 
very revolutionary changes take place in the he- 
reditary * works and days.' There would certainly 
be embarrassment nowadays in finding the two 
evergreen oaks to which, in the ballad of Dona 
Sol and Dona Elvira, the two countesses were tied 
by their sovereign lords. In the closing rapture 
of the Antigone, the chorus of ancient Thebans 
cry out : ' Wisdom is far the best : age bringeth 
wisdom ; ' a maxim of antiquity by no means ap- 
plicable to this country. 

Geologically, one can fancy few countries more 
instructive than Spain. The mountains are rich 



3IO SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

in varied formations, in fossils, in cretaceous and 
carboniferous deposits, while streaks of quicksil- 
ver, lead, copper, and iron show a mineral wealth 
far from fully developed as yet. Four or five 
immense mountain ranges cross the country in 
every direction, leaving a central table-land half 
the size of Italy, and filled with mineral springs 
of every description. It is a very striking sight, 
in the neighborhood of Cadiz, to see the whole 
low-hung horizon filled with pyramids of glitter- 
ing salt of great height, produced by the spon- 
taneous evaporation of the climate, and piled up 
thus from an unknown antiquity, awaiting export. 
The sea is simply allowed to flow into numerous 
shallow oblong water-beds, and in a short time 
a sheet of crystals is left behind. Some years 
ago it did not rain for nine years in the province 
of Alicante ; one can therefore imagine what an 
electric engine the sun is among the salt marshes 
of Andalusia ; * the sun, that great natural farmer 
of Spain, supplies every want, clothes, feeds, and 
makes a perpetual summer and harvest.' 

The nearest approach to a picture of a Spanish 
plow, it is said, will be found among the Egyp- 
tian monumental pictures, while in the book of 
Deuteronomy the curious may discover the de- 
scription of the olives and vines, as now culti- 
vated. There is nobody to follow Scott's apho- 
rism, and * plant the acorn that may send its 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 3I I 

future ribs of oak to future victories like Trafal- 
gar.' 

The prosperity of France is, perhaps, largely- 
due to the five millions of six-acre farms into 
which the greater part of the country is divided ; 
minute and thorough culture is the result by no 
means to be found in the remaining fifty thou- 
sand estates of six hundred acres. each. The 
majority of the real estate in Spain is similarly 
divided into small farms of six or seven acres, 
and fifty to sixty bushels of corn an acre is no 
unusual yield in the corn-bread provinces of the 
north and northwest. From sixty to one hun- 
dred dollars an acre in vine or fruit land of good 
quality is probably as much revenue as average 
Andalusian soil will bring in. One thousand gal- 
lons of wine an acre are said to be no very ex- 
traordinary yield in some parts of Andalusia, 
while labor is cheap at thirty or thirty-five cents 
a day. One of the delights of summer are the 
heaps of grapes found on every table at every 
meal, frequently set off by olives of gigantic size. 
Olives luxuriate in limestone regions ; from one 
to ten bushels are yielded by each tree in good 
seasons, while the only mathematics the Spanish 
seem to know are the straight lines in which 
they plant them. An acre of such trees will pro- 
duce over three hundred pounds of olive oil, 
consumed in amounts of nearly five gallons per 
head annually. 



3 1 2 SPAIN IN PROFILE 

The value of the orange plantations of Cata- 
lonia, Malaga, Alicante, Valencia, and Murcia is 
rather hard to get at ; thirty or thirty-five dollars 
a tree is, I believe, a very usual valuation, and a 
cluster of twenty trees will yield a revenue of 
some six hundred dollars. Five thousand dollars 
is considered a good price for two acres and a 
half of oranges, though I am not sure that the 
figures are correct. Three thousand dollars an 
acre is no uncommon price for the irrigated land 
of Valencia, — 

* Hacia Valencia camina, H 

Tierra rica, hermosa, y liana.' « 

The whole atmosphere of Malaga is perfumed at 
certain seasons with the raisin-drying, when the 
muscatels are hung in the sun, and the produce 
of the graperies is getting ready for the plum- 
cakes of following Christmases. The grapes are 
freely given away, and there is a good-natured 
stare if you offer to pay. The quais are covered 
with the small, square boxes, awaiting shipment 
to England and France, and thousands of hun- 
dred-weight voyage to distant countries every 
year. Huge claret-colored oval figs are found 
upon the breakfast-tables at Barcelona and Cadiz ; 
the landscapes of the South are frequently bright- 
ened by wavy almond-trees full of fruit, and the 
pomegranate, date-palm, and lime are abundant. 
Begging, therefore, must be one of the conven- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 3 1 3 

tionalities of the country, for there is certainly 
enough to eat. 

Spain, in such a series of panoramic slides, 
might be made to yield results most interesting to 
the agriculturist, statistician, and political econo- 
mist. At one time the most splendid empire in 
Europe, her reduction to the necessitous and agi- 
tated status of the present would afford a study 
of peculiar value. She is a group of nationali- 
ties, as marked and distinct individually as the 
Irishman and the Englishman. The inter-action 
and inter-dependence of these, with the gradual 
elaboration and evolution of national character, 
as we find it to-day in all its precision, will, let 
us hope, some day find an historian worthy of 
the theme. 



XIV. 

As from an infinitely distant land 
Come airs, and floating echoes. 

Matthew Arnold. 

Madrid is not specially rich in suburbs or en- 
virons, but it makes up for them by two towns of 
great interest which, though not, strictly speaking, 
either suburbs or environs, may conveniently be 
classed under one or the other head. The Arabs 
have left their trace in the name of the one ; and 
in the other lingers a ray of pagan antiquity 
which serves to connect the Roman dominion 
livingly with the present. I refer to Alcala (the 
Castle) and Aranjuez Q Ara Jovis) — the one 
green and gracious with all the trees and memo- 
ries planted by Spanish kings from the second 
Philip down to the present time — a series of 
heroic avenues and silver waters ; the other 
unique in its one benign possession not gathered 
by external accretion, but born in itself, as if for 
itself — gray old Alcala, — and itself alone, in all 
the civilized world. 

Here is a picture : it is summer — summer 
just touched with the light of twenty years ago ; 



I 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 315 

behind, the great belt of Appalachian pines, 
sombre and soothing, stretching their great gen- 
tle arms over the green South ; in front the Gulf 
of Mexico, melodiously large and light in the 
summer sun, a thousand-fold Medusa-masque, not 
turning to stone, but with a perennial smile on 
it, and such beauty as is only known in the far 
South ; the white sands go to meet it, and there 
is a delicious ripple where they come in contact ; 
there are wharves and white sails and idle fisher- 
men seining or mending their nets, and gulls that 
sparkle on the June air strangely as they lift their 
white breasts to the sun ; a great yard opens its 
ample arms and incloses a lovely bit of summer 
in the shape of lawns, orchards, and parterres, 
among all which stands an old house, a house 
of happy childhoods, many refinements, active- 
minded children, — some with a streak of poetry 
and mystery across their natures, like the bars on 
an old escutcheon ; others hunters, or wanderers, 
or fishermen, quick to go, and fearless to shoot. 
The place is all breadth and beauty, with a wide 
air, a wide view, a wide winsome sea, ever poet- 
izing this houseful of children and stilling them 
into meditation, they know not about what. The 
wide, long, precious galleries ; the lazy-flapping 
awnings to keep out the sun, the figs, and scents, 
and orchards, and great glowing hydrangeas burn- 
ing blue in the sun ; the weird pines and strange 



3l6 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

sand-bars at evening when the tide goes out — 
what are all these to one of these little fellows 
who has found in this villa by the sea a case full 
of old books, and among them the Adventures of 
the Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Man- 
cha ? How the whole summer transforms itself 
into laughter for him, and the genius of that 
happy summer becomes the genius of Cervantes ! 

A traveler in Spain who does not perform the 
pilgrimage to Alcala is worse than the Mahom- 
etan on whom his code enjoins the pilgrimage to 
Mecca, and who dies without having fixed his 
eyes on the Holy City. True, the journey may 
entail dirt, fatigue, bad air in close railway-car- 
riages, and some hours of fasting in the birth- 
place of Cervantes itself ; but what is this to the 
man who can touch his soul with its associations 
but once in a life-time ? In the prologue to his 
gracious book it is the desocupado lector — the idle 
reader — that he addresses, and who has ever 
been so busy as to grudge idling an hour away 
over the story of Cervantes ? 

It was one gray afternoon of hottest summer 
that I left Madrid and took the Saragossa train 
to spend a few hours at Alcala, about an hour's 
ride in the slow Spanish train ; a blanched after- 
noon ; not a gray afternoon in the sense cloudy, 
for the Spanish light is so powerful that a veil of 
clouds becomes simply a mass of translucent 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 3 I 7 

pearl-color, and the light from yellow turns to 
white ; a faint, filtered, pearly afternoon when 
Madrid seemed to justify its reputation for ex- 
quisitely thin, pure air, and the Guadarramas to- 
wards the Escorial shone sharp and clear on the 
northern horizon. No railway, perhaps, ever ap- 
proached or left a town in a picturesque way \ 
and Madrid forms no exception. There is a sin- 
gularly sharp line drawn between it and the sur- 
rounding country. There is no long lingering 
suburb-like approach — one moment you are in 
Madrid, the next you have glided lazily out into 
the landscape that the Spaniards poetically call 
patria — only by a figure of speech surely, for 
a more done and overdone country, worked to 
the quick and exhausted to the core ages ago, 
it would be hard to imagine. Travelers never 
tire of their abuse of this heartless-looking coun- 
try ; but there is a fascination in its gray, gaunt 
tints, its general haggardness, and the emaciation 
of the landscape-forms which, without being ana- 
lyzed by the Spaniards themselves, attaches them 
to their country deeply. It is like the hollow 
cheeks and gaunt form of Don Quixote himself, 
for if not taken in over-doses, travel in Spain 
weaves a subtle spell over the traveler which is 
as strong as it is inexplicable. 

Four or five leagues are traversed before any 
vestiges of human or animal life are seen, except 



3l8 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

here and there a squalid posada, an inn, or a 
hamlet, such as Cervantes himself has immor- 
talized by making it the birthplace of his hero. 
He was imprisoned in Estremadura by certain 
wretches whose dues he had been empowered to 
collect ; he was seized and thrown into the vil- 
lage * calaboose ; ' whereupon, in revenge, in its 
very prison, he began the story of Don Quixote, 
and, like another Bunyan, danced the village fig- 
ures — Cunning, Romanticism, Credulity — for 
the delectation of the world, up and down the 
magic-lantern canvas of a fantastic allegory. 
And for three hundred years the world has stood 
before the wonderful puppet-play with smiles and 
tears. 

Perhaps now and then may be seen in the dis- 
tance the ganado of some reputed cattle-raiser, 
— the herd of bulls destined for the bull-rings of 
Seville or Madrid, attended by men on horse- 
back, with long poles — huge jovine and bovine 
creatures, anything but suggestive of the graceful 
legend of Europa ; or flocks of brown sheep 
hardly distinguishable from the pasture-grounds 
where they are huddled together; or the same 
long-horned goats that peep out from between the 
covers of Cervantes' romance, and recall the ce- 
lestial speculations of the good Don. The whole* i 
landscape is intensely uninteresting. To one, 
however, ' hoodwinked with fancy,' the hardness 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 319 

of its tone is compensated by the wealth of events 
that have made of it one of the great battle- 
grounds of Spanish history. 

Presently, to the right, a low line of hills is 
descried ; then a little verdure ; then a group of 
stately elms following a stream — ' las riberas del 
famoso Hendres^^ themselves of Cervantes' Gala- 
tea ; then abridge; then a striking aggregation 
of church-pinnacles and quaint spires ; and then 
the train draws up at Alcala. Not exactly at Al- 
cala either, for like many Spanish railways this 
one has the habit of ignoring towns and dropping 
its passengers at a station, some distance from 
the town. A general scattering takes place : 
some follow the dusty road lined with trees ; oth- 
ers take to the fields and enter the town by vari- 
ous streets which debouch into a paddock where, 
following immemorial custom, the grain has been 
trodden out by animals. We see it is a town of 
ecclesiastics by the priests that alight from the 
train and make a bee-line for their haunts in the 
gray, ancient rookeries before us. Alcala was 
once a famous religious centre, and disputed the 
! supremacy with Toledo itself — the prince and 
i pinnacle of Spanish hierarchies. Not to yield to 
■Toledo was as bad as not to admit the divine 
-aright of kings in Charles's and James's time. 
Toledo was the heart of a huge ecclesiastical sys- 
tem ; its archbishop was a sort of pope ; and its 



320 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

enginery embraced every appliance from a cathe- 
dral to a thumb-screw, to win the faithful and 
compel obedience. 

In Alcala one sees relics of a similar state of 
things : a huge system gone to wreck ; a pope 
unfrocked ; a silence the more intense after its 
vivid student life of the sixteenth century; and a 
series of noble buildings moldering gradually to 
pieces under the neglect, the changed faith, or 
the poverty of the present. * A man is a rascal 
as soon as he is sick,' said Dr. Johnson ; so it 
seems with intricate religious establishments 
which, as soon as they become * establishments,' 
give signs of inherent decay and drop to pieces. 
And the ruin which they involve is material even 
more than spiritual. Here in Alcala, I think one 
can count nearly a score of immense convents, 
their owners now dispossessed and the buildings 
turned into barracks. Has the abrasion of Time 
rubbed the * church ' off and left the * militant ' 
behind ? 

* E tamben as memorias gloriosas 
D'aquelles reis, que foram dilatando 
A Fe, o imperio,' 

cries Camoens in the beginning of his immortal 
poem. ' The glorious memories of those kings ' 
have proved insufficient to their memorials. Al- 
cala, the brilliant university-town of Cardinal 
Ximenes' creation, the birth-place of Katharine 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 32 [ 

of Aragon (there is something noble in the great 
K of that name) and the Emperor Ferdinand, 
the home of Crazy Jane, the fashionable resort of 
the clergy, for three hundred years the intellect- 
ual centre of Spain; how little remains of all 
this in this statuesque stony-faced town with its 
overgrown palaces and dwarfed individualities, 
its penury and its purple, its white glory in the 
brave Castilian annals, and its utter strangeness 
and meanness to-day. You wander along its ar- 
caded streets and wonder in which of them Cer- 
vantes was born ; you stop before huge churches 
and wonder in which of them he was baptized. 
The place is silent save for a few crawling old 
women, an auctioneer bidding bravely in the 
gathering dusk to a crowd of females, and the 
men sitting in the squares inhaling the twilight, as 
it were, or staring at the weird carvings on Xi- 
menes' university. With its splendid past you un- 
consciously contrast its squalid present. There 
is one straight long street ; a cathedral ; and a 
pretty square with marble benches, rows of trees, 
a fountain, and a booth of some wandering play- 
ers, such as Moliere or Cervantes himself wrote 
farces for in their * journeys.' There is a strange 
richness on the old town just now, too, for the 
mist is pricked by the thousand-arrowed sun, and 
long floods of flickering orange light are pouring 
over it and poetizing it. Cervantes' whole story 



322 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

passes before one phantasmagorically in the twi- 
light — an odd procession of haps and mishaps, 
of luck and ill-luck ; the student, the soldier, the 
captive, the saint ; one-armed, in prison and then 
out, politely ignored by Lope de Vega, the man 
of twenty-one million verses, then courted by 
kings' sons ; now at Madrid, now at Salamanca, 
and now at Valladolid ; always and ever in need 
of money and never having it; his story has a 
divine cheerfulness in it, despite its pathetic vi- 
cissitudes ; one is drawn strangely and tenderly 
to the man ; and the city of his childhood, tak- 
ing on some of the glamour of his own inexhaust- 
ible spirit, arrays itself in a beauty not at all its 
own, and is put away by its visitor as one of the 
choicest bits to remember. 

In a funny little church near the plaza this 
funniest of babies was baptized ; the birth-entry 
has been discovered ; it is signed by parson and 
sexton, and the never-ending dispute among the 
Spanish towns for the honor of being his natal 
place is put to rest. One can look at Leslie's 
quaint and lovel}'' pictures now in peace, and let 
one's mind fly from them straight to old Alcala 
that mothered this wondrous child and sent him 
abroad as the Only-begotten of Smiles. In good 
Saint Mary's church-book, it reads thus: *0n 
Sunday, 9th Oct. of the year of our Lord 1547, was 
baptized Miguel, son of Rodrigo de Cervantes, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 323 

and of his wife Dona Leoner. Juan Pardo was 
godfather, and he was baptized by the Bachiller 
Serrano, curate of Our Lady. The witnesses be- 
ing the sacristan, Baltasar Vazquez, and I that 
baptized him.' 

Hundreds baptized there before and since ; but 
never another child of immortality has strayed 
into the old church. 

His biographer quaintly records that Camoens' 
hair was ' verging toward saffron-color.' Cervan- 
tes' had the same tinge; and it was doubtless to 
this Gothic strain that he owed his ambient hu- 
mor, that scintillating lightning of the eyes that 
is laughter illuminated. This rich humor did 
not seem to bubble up in him till he had visited 
Andalusia, and fed it with the varied experience 
of that romantic country. How full of splendid 
movement is that time ! It seems a perpetual 
pageant and procession ; moving courts, march- 
ing armies, wandering lordlings and their retin- 
ues, a Canterbury jingle of pilgrimages, a happy 
spirit of poetry and romance, with the boundless 
story of the New World in people's ears, and the 
brightness of its new hope eloquently spread- 
ing over the incredulous nations. Verily, a rare 
moment for some daring combination. And Cer- 
vantes was the result ! And to think, too, how 
near he came to being an emigre to America ! 
What would poor Don Quixote have done in our 
wildernesses ? 



3 24 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Walking clown the Carretera de San Geronimo 
in Madrid one morning, I came on a little square 
bright with pleasant summer verdure — one of the 
oases of Madrid ; in the centre was a fine granite 
pedestal, and on top of that a statue of Cervan- 
tes arrayed in antique Castilian cloak and short- 
sword — the picture of morning freshness and 
pride. The attitude is one of great simplicity and 
nobleness such as he so lovingly brings himself 
before us in, in his charming prefaces. He stands 
before a large building over which is written 
Lyceo Cervantes in large letters. He has thus 
become the symbol of intellectual advance in 
Spain, and stands on his sunny pedestal as if 
well conscious of it. It is a fine thought thus to 
bring a great writer constantly before the plastic 
minds of boys and girls, and make them feel his 
potency perhaps long before they have become 
practically acquainted with his works. In Al- 
cala the sleepy burghers have awakened suffi- 
ciently to call a street after him ; and on a wall \ 
somewhere in the town is a placard announcing 
the fact of his birth — surely for old Alcala the 
most important event that ever occurred under 
the shadow of its church-steeples. One is free 
to say that probably the world at large would 
care little for Spain if Cervantes had not been 
born there. There is something very lovely in 
the serene, sweet-tempered way in which he took 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 325 

his misfortunes, and, with the rest of that Bohe- 
mian age, wandered from town to town in search 
of a living. As the youngest child, he was the 
devoted favorite of his mother and sisters, as we 
see by the latter good ladies' giving their whole 
earthly possessions to ransom him from captivity 
when he was a prisoner in Algiers. 

Unfortunately for Alcala, the university was 
removed to Madrid a few years ago, and has left 
behind it nothing but its lordly shell in the 
Colegio de San Ildefonso. Like many Spanish 
things it requires distance; then it looms up 
superbly, and has a rich and grand air. Near 
at hand San Ildefonso's is not devoid of clumsi- 
ness, but there is a grandeur in its solitude, its 
galleries, its empty patios^ and carven halls that 
saves it from contempt. The busy zoophytes 
that filled this empty shell — eleven thousand of 
them in number at one time — have gone, and 
the nineteen colleges that composed it have dwin- 
dled into nothingness. Alcala, they say, was 
once crowded with merry assemblies — no end of 
* Spanish Students ' and ^ Golden Legends ' were 
found here. Their rags, their songs, their gui- 
tars, their impecuniosity, their light-heartedness, 
have passed into a proverb, and point the wit of 
an ancient rhyme. There is much in their tradi- 
tional life that recalls the happy shiftlessness of 
the German universities of to-day — of Heidel- 



326 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

berg (or Idleberg it might be called), for in- 
stance, where top-boots, and schldgers^ and beer, 
and dogs, and ogling constitute the curriculum. 

Near by San Ildefonso's is a Moorish-Gothic 
chapel, which is the shrine of a great scholar. 
Here all the Arabic, Hebrew, and fanaticism that 
once illustrated Cardinal Ximenes lie enshrined 
beneath a bit of dog Latin. You seldom see a 
more exquisite creation of art than this medal- 
lion-hung, griffin-sculptured, robed and foliated 
tomb, on which a white ghost of sheeted marble 
lies outstretched in the shape of the effigied car- 
dinal himself. It was uncanny in that dark old 
church, with its domed dusk, its aged Spanish 
women, its vesper hush, its deep and spiritual si- 
lence : the ages seemed to meet there in a multi- 
tudinous conversazione ; it was a polyglot stillness 
amid which reigned this exquisite lump of trans- 
figured stone with its white waving hand, its impe- 
rious white feet, its stony snowy glance. There 
was a bier laid with funereal cloth at the door, 
awaiting the last sad offices to be performed over 
some departed burgher : a bell tolled solemnly 
in some upper space of the mysteriously peopled 
twilight ; there was a yellow pallor of dying light 
along the clerestory windows : the whole place 
had a scent of age and perishableness. One could 
readily imagine the worm-like ornaments of the 
pillars detaching themselves and floating in long, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 327 

dragon-like undulations through the weird nave ; 
or the heavy angels of the high altar withdraw- 
ing on phantom pinions, or overshadowing venge- 
fuUy the whited geniuses of the tomb. A living 
creature creeps in such a place \ historic reminis- 
cence becomes a life-chilling ooze ; one's spinal 
column turns into a column of mercury that falls 
to the freezing point, and there is a flight of 
warm and winsome sensations. Why should men 
carve a memory of ice and crystallize it in marble 
and drop it in the painted air of an old cathedral 
like this, and leave it to chill the generations as 
they gaze, for example, on the tomb of a Ximenes t 
A quick, warm walk to the little church where 
Cervantes was baptized, at the other end of the 
town, brings back the blood, and recalls one 
from shadowy speculations to the quaint tableau 
of October 9, 1547. I do not think a hair on the 
head of a single member of the ancient com- 
munity has changed since that date. The houses 
bulge over the street, blink out of their slit-like 
windows, go on all-fours, and turn up their dor- 
mer eyelids in a contempt as infinite now as 
then. Spanish soldiers make love in the old im- 
memorial fashion, now as then. Their blue and 
scarlet apparitions go in and out the great door- 
w^ays where the old monks housed in bygone 
times ; and the flitting silhouettes of Spanish 
sefioritas move to and fro behind the blinds 



328 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

watching them, at the old game of Romeo and 
Juliet. A few cafes and confectioneries here and 
there serve to suggest that a drop of modern life 
has somehow or other trickled into the antic 
place, where one all the time expects, like Mil- 
ton, to listen to A Solemn Musicke. It is a 
place of ancient gases and ancient lasses, as one 
can see on peeping into the gasioza-^o'^s with 
their ministering Hebes. You cannot imagine 
a merry eye being born in Alcala, or a glitter- 
ing pen cut out of its goose-quills. Cervantes, 
therefore, must have been, — so far as his early 
youth was concerned — a lump of pure genius, 
for there was nothing in his birthplace itself to 
give the stir, and strangeness, and sweetness, 
which we find in those early years, any more 
than one could guess the Alhambra interior from 
its outside. His mellowest work, too, came in 
his old age — an age that ended at sixty-nine, the 
same year and day that Shakspere died — then 
he put his hand down into his deep and rich mem- 
ory and brought forth the rare bit of the second 
part of Don Quixote. There was a strong anal- 
ogy between the life of Cervantes and his older 
contemporary Camoens : only, while one devoted 
his epic genius to the singing of chivalry — the 
fates of the illustrious Gama and the ' Gente Por- 
tugueza,' — the other devoted himself to 'smil- 
ing it away.' There was a common element of 



SPAIN IN PROFILE 329 

wandering Bohemianism in both, a common pas- 
sion, a common resource. The sad spectacle of 
Camoens' servant begging bread from door to 
door for his needy master is only equaled by the 
penury and misery of the latter days of Cervantes 
or Spenser. There was noble blood in both, and 
the same noble devotion to flowers, women, the 
sea, and the mother of God. There must have 
been great elements of beauty and strength in an 
age which could produce two such contempora- 
ries, with only the narrow strip of Estremadura 
between. The most intense hatred of the Moors 
breathes through the Os Lusiadas ; the same 
would not be hard to find in the comedies of Cer- 
vantes. The ' epic of patriotism,' as Bouterwek 
calls the poem of Camoens, is worthy to be put 
beside the matchless romance. 

The country round Alcala looks as if it could 
not produce a daisy, and yet the boninas innu- 
merosas of the spring-time there give evidence of 
a secret fertility, late and long-mellowing, per- 
haps, but on occasion more than rivaling the 
luxuriousness of other localities. So Cervantes 
may have taken unseen sap from its life and soil, 
to reappear in its own good time. There is after 
all the tender beauty of the olden time on the 
old place — a secret persuasiveness and sugges- 
tiveness that calls us to linger in it and put it 
away with other ancient cities that are full of a 



330 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

sweet remembrance, — far out of sight but sel- 
dom out of mind. I felt more than a common 
interest in its casino, its shabby people hurrying 
to vespers, its Villa Cervantes, where an old 
house lifts its curious Spanish grace out of a 
shine of flowers, and where the trees were so 
green and so old ; and for the fruit-stalls un- 
der the arcades, where heaps of delicious Cas- 
tilian pears turned up their fruity gold to the 
gaze. The place had an air of aged Spanish lace 
about it — lace that has yellowed and petrified 
and now hangs in rare remnants here and there 
among the carved gables of the university, in 
token of a vanished opulence. One can in such 
a place, with the conjury of fancy, more readily 
call up a vision of such figures as Dante, Ca- 
moens, Leonardo, but above all, of Cervantes, 
to whom might be applied without violence the 
noble epithet which Lucan applied to Pompey : 

CIVIS OBIT. 



XV. 

Now know I well how that fond phantasy, 
Which made my soul the worshiper and thrall 
Of earthly art, is vain ; how criminal 

Is that which all men seek unwillingly. 

Michael Angelo. 

It is a rather singular pilgrimage to make, — 
a visit to the convent, palace, musemn, and bur- 
ial-place of the greatest and most sombre bigot 
of modern times ; but Philip's Escorial is so true 
an exponent of his mind and character that no 
one should, of course, omit it. Many things may 
be ignored in Spain, but not this gigantic mass 
of individualized granite, redolent as it is of the 
dreams, penances, and ecstasies of a great mon- 
arch. Photographically considered, the Escorial 
is most interesting. The dark lights and shad- 
ows of the camera idealize the harsh tones and 
proportions of the building, as they are put forth 
with almost savage accent under this crying sun- 
shine. A picture taken from above, on the mount- 
ain-side adjacent, permits you to look down upon 
a perfect maze of corridors, and cross corridors, 
courts, towers, domes, and gardens, with here and 
there the luminous flash of water, and the green 



332 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

presence of most curiously trimmed and tortured 
gardens of box. Viewed in this way, the w^hole 
forms an admirable picture. The guides sing the 
dullness and grayness of the place in heroic 
measure, so that on arriving at the station, all 
surrounded by bright beds of lovely flowers, one 
is agreeably disappointed to find anticipations of 
a stupid day not realized. Madrid is the cen- 
tre of an ugly desert. An hour after leaving 
it, the country begins to break up into clumps 
and clusters of fantastic bowlders ; the frame of 
mountains comes nearer, and presently the en- 
gine plunges into a tunnel, and then out among 
huge masses of splintered rock, the forerunners 
of the Guadarrama range, to the edge of which 
this mighty palace clings. Viewed with this 
background of superb mountains, with the thin 
air all a-quiver with heat and light, the plains be- 
neath spreading their illimitable mummy color at 
your feet, the Escorial is like the fly on the char- 
iot w^heel, — a mere speck. Detached from its 
surroundings, and made the sole object of con- 
templation, the stupendous plan on which its 
architects constructed it fills the mind with won- 
der. It is then seen to have eight towers 200 
feet high, and to be more than 150 yards long and 
120 wide, while it covers 500,000 feet of ground: 
a pretty hermitage for a sour and ascetic king ! 
It is a small Constantinople in itself. In all 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 333 

this vast mass of linear measure, uxorious Philip 
occupied a space not much bigger than that the 
old English chronicler mentions as occupied by 
the grave of William the Conqueror, — a cell un- 
imaginably plain, whence he could witness the 
celebration of mass, attend to his voluminous 
breviaries and devotions, and exercise a spider- 
like superintendence over all the threads of his 
labyrinthine abode. What a picture : the great 
king hidden in this bee-cell, and sending his 
lynx glance thence all over the kingdom : a tab- 
leau of kneeling majesty, watching politician, 
self-abnegating voluptuary, grand inquisitor, and 
petty tormentor of four wives ! What could pro- 
ceed out of such a heart but a frozen torrent 
of granite dedicated to San Lorenzo's gridiron ? 
Whether or not the monastery was built by 
Philip in consequence of a vow made at the 
battle of San Quentin (which he did not wit- 
ness), and in compensation for a church of San 
Lorenzo, destroyed by him on that day (which 
he did not destroy), it certainly began to rise 
shortly after that memorable engagement, and 
in twenty-one years stood there on the mount- 
ain-side an accomplished fact. One would like 
to calculate the number of masons and artisans 
who died of ennui gazing on its stuccoed sides 
and freezing rigidities, before it was finally fin- 
ished, and handed over (metaphorically) into 



334 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Philip's hands. The Escorial is his living heart : 
cold, massive, grim, full of a sort of bleak orna- 
mentation, with one brilliant nook for a library, 
and a thousand obscure corners, where the rats 
and mice and flunkeys congregated, to eat him 
out of house and home, and then shove him ig- 
nominiously into his bronze coffin in the Pan- 
theon beneath the high altar. The whole thing 
is an anachronism in this sunny clime. It re- 
minds one of huge and homely London done in 
granite : the granite is the frozen mist and gray- 
ness of the great town ; the corridors are streets, 
and through the whole is the dull throb of Phil- 
ip's heart, like a sluggish Thames, meandering 
subterraneously. Great architects worked on it, 
but Philip himself modeled and molded them 
and their plans to suit himself, impressing his 
tyrannic seal on everything, and calling into dis- 
mal existence this palatial bore. Yesterday there 
were little driblets of court life sprinkling its im- 
passive /(^//^j". King Alfonso and his court were 
there, and the chapel is shown with mysterious 
awe where the young king comes every day to 
hear mass before the altar where his poor young 
wife lies in state. How many faces are pressed 
against this iron grille^ and how many eyes are 
strained in toward the ever-burning lamp, to get 
some weak glimpse and memorial of the dead 
young queen, so early gone, so pure and girlish 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 335 

in her gentle life. And then one thinks back 
from this heap of tender dust lying here, buried 
but yesterday, and called to the throne of Spain 
but a few months ago, to the icy crypt beneath, 
where the ghostly Philip himself lies, surrounded 
by his descendants, kings to the right, queens 
and mothers of kings to the left, all caged and 
labeled in this dungeon, like so many stuffed ani- 
mals. What a contrast ! 

Well is this burial-place called a Pantheon,^ for 
it is full of pagans. 

Charles V. lies above his son ; and one defunct 
tyrant succeeds another till their ashes form a 
lye intolerable to the memory, in which all ten- 
derness and remorse for them are dissolved 
away. After Charles's death had determined 
the position of the capital, and Philip ascended 
the throne, and Madrid was proclaimed the sole 
court, the son remembered his father's wish for 
a special mausoleum for himself and his de- 
scendants, and characteristically selected this se- 
cluded pine-clad spot in which to rear it. The 
seat is pointed out on the bleak hill-side, where 
he used to sit and watch the progress of the 
work, — a one-and-twenty years' vigil, — gather- 
ing within its Greco-Roman plan and vast propor- 
tions all that he knew of grandeur, massiveness, 
and simplicity. The first designer (Toledo) died 
— no doubt of ennui — during its erection, and 



336 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the building was handed over to the great Her- 
rera, who is said to have made several felicitous 
alterations, and to have relieved the hungry bald- 
ness of the original design by sundry innovations. 
A caserne, a penitentiary, a tobacco manufactory, 
all come into one's mind on the first glance at 
its immense and uninteresting fagade. You can 
Avalk ninety-six miles up and down its passages, 
gazing at half a mile of fresco-painting, ascending 
eighty-nine staircases, looking through twenty- 
five hundred windows and passing twelve hun- 
dred doors, worshiping at forty altars, pacing 
fifteen cloisters, and admiring sixteen courts, 
not counting fountains, gardens, apartments, li- 
brary, and church. A garden full of stunted 
trees, having scant vegetation, makes an effort 
to impress the spectator, but one turns almost 
with acrimony away from the wretched failure, 
and wonders at and detests Philip for eternizing 
his gloom in this gaunt spot. The water in the 
tanks is green with age, dust encases the trees 
and highways, all day long the sun blazes on the 
monumental ash-heap {scoricE, hence the name) 
and tries to bejewel its angles with some poetry 
of tender light; in vain. Its ugliness cries to 
Heaven and makes an eternal appeal against 
the human cunning which has tormented it into 
existence. You enter the church and find it really 
an effective piece of severe and unornamented 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 337 

work, with four grand piers supporting the roof, 
a dome, a glorious screen made of precious mar- 
bles and gilt bronze, many altars, and a ceiling 
thronged with multitudinous arms, legs, anat- 
omies, and physiologies of dancing saints and 
prophets, all by Luca Make - Haste Giordano. 
You behold the weary maestro involved in the 
complexities and entanglements of his own work 
and laboring day and night to get out of it, as 
out of a nightmare ; hence the completion of the 
three thousand feet of frescoing in seven months. 
Five minutes suffice to run the eye over this 
field of the cloth of gold and to wonder from 
what witch's caldron it all emerged. Chapels, 
altars, pulpits, organs, high chapel, sacristy, rel- 
iquary, and oratories fill up its three hundred and 
twenty by two hundred and thirty feet, with all 
the glories of the Renaissance. The combined 
effect is one of stately serenity, stillness, and sol- 
itude. No hymn or gorgeous ceremony could, 
however, warm up this ecclesiastical Labrador ; the 
worshiper is oppressed with it, even more than 
with some of Sir Christopher Wren's three-and- 
fifty ^masterpieces.' The reliquary is a museum 
of saintly anatomy; seven thousand four hundred 
and twenty-one relics, bodies, heads, arms, and 
legs of martyrs, enrich this grotesque collection, 
besides the roasted reminiscences of San Lorenzo 
himself, a bar of his gridiron, his thigh and foot, 



338 SPAIN- IN PROFILE. 

etc., etc. ; a shuddering restaurant fit to refresh the 
souls of devotees alone with spiritual food. Oh, 
one sighs, could it all be shoveled out and the 
whole place be sprinkled with fresh air and sun- 
shine ! Nearly every picture worth looking at 
has been removed to the gallery of Madrid, and 
what remain bear the fatal scroll : restaurado. 
The choir is above, opposite the high altar of the 
church, and on the way thither one stops to ad- 
mire the colossal choral books, each leaf of which 
was once the skin of a whole calf. The choir 
stalls are of plain ebony and cedar, and in a 
dusky corner is shown the seat whither Philip 
used to steal and sit as he listened to mass, and 
here it was that he was kneeling when the news 
of the battle of Lepanto reached his ear, which 
he received unmoved, and then tranquilly re- 
sumed his interrupted orisons. The gem of the 
choir is the white marble Christ carved by Ben- 
venuto Cellini, and bearing the master's auto- 
graph. It is in a narrow passage behind the 
prior's stall, but the space is all illuminated with 
its beauteous presence. 

Any one who wants to see kings in rows and 
queens in tiers will descend into the jasper twi- 
light of the Pantheon, and there kings like cu- 
cumbers are piled one on top of the other in urns, 
and queens lie on the other side, as strictly sep- 
arated from their lords in death as many of them 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 339 

were by taste and habit in life. Twenty-six of 
these ghastly cases contribute to the pagan 
gloom of this Blue Beard's closet, but how many 
pages have they each contributed to history. It 
is indeed a sepulchral encyclopaedia and epitome 
of Spanish history, with only a gap or two since 
the time of Charles Quint. 

What a relief finally to emerge out of all this 
into the long and beautiful library, with its books 
bound in black or dark purple leather, with their 
edges turned outward ! This is the single cheer- 
ful speck in that iron heart : a brilliant passion 
for collecting books, manuscripts and works of 
art. The collection was once much vaster and 
more valuable than it is now; but there is still 
a strange interest in looking at the fine brevi- 
aries of Philip and his father, running over the 
golden letters of the Codice Aureo, and examining 
through the great flakes of plate glass the splen- 
did Persian, Arabic, and early Christian MSS. 
Here as everywhere else Philip's portrait looks 
down sombrely at you from the wall, and you al- 
ready see in its wan features the elements of ex- 
cruciating torment which the king suffered three 
months before his death. The palace occupies 
another huge slice of the building, and is full of 
tapestries, frescoes, halls, and staircases of more 
or less merit. 



XVI. 

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly. 

Shelley. 

CiNTRA is a vision of summer pleasantness. 
But a jaded head and tired ankles cannot do it 
justice. From Toledo to Cintra is a consider- 
able leap, but some days in Madrid, already de- 
scribed, intervened and bridged over the chasm 
Then Lisbon came in for a share of attention : 
finally Cintra, with its link of charm and asso- 
ciation in the poetry of Lord Byron. No eye. 
resting for several hours on the south side of 
the arid Serra de Cintra, can conceive the fresh 
and living beauty of this north side, clothed in 
one compact mass of luxurious verdure. I had 
to rise at five in the morning, make my way 
through the unintelligible Portuguese of the 
sleepy Lisbon porter, w^alk to the Praga de Ouro 
(Place of Gold) and secure my place in the un- 
tidy little diligence which runs twice a day be- 
tween Lisbon and the summer capital. The 
road led up and down for a succession of miles, 
through the mountainous streets along which 
Lisbon is built ; then suburbs, villas of the nobil- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 34 1 

ity, farms and vineyards, many of them marvel- 
ously picturesque, one trellis and tangle of vege- 
tation. A very singular feature of the land- 
scape are the villas covered all over outside 
with the most vivid azulejo tiles, white, green, 
red, lilac, blue, variegated, arranged in disks, 
stars, geometric designs, landscapes, figures, an- 
imals ; — or again, simply doors and windows 
framed in delicate glazed traceries of multiform 
pattern, looking very pure and pleasing in the 
transparent air. It must be said, however, that 
the Portuguese abuse this Moorish style of orna- 
mentation. Their churches are paved and lined 
with tiles — which gives a strangely cold and 
grotesque look to the interior. Great walls cov- 
ered with tiled pictures, such as one sees in the 
bottom of an old blue china dish ; impossible 
fountains and gardens in lilac and ochre, glazed 
forests and glassy seas, icy landscapes in chill 
pea-green, azulejo trellis-work and arabesques 
that cast their frozen shadows on the inlaid 
pavement give one aesthetic catarrh and set one 
to sneezing. Such frosty ornamentation is unfit 
for church interiors where the corners shine with 
oil-paintings, beautiful painted glass throws its 
irradiations as out of a thousand open petals 
through the dusky ogives, and mysterious sweet- 
ness and gloom are the key-note to a true feel- 
ing. But in a summer villa hanging amid the 



342 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

terraces and heights in hot August sunshine with 
a garden full of heavy perfumes enfolding the 
villa-wings in summer glory, with filigree pavil- 
ions, marble fountains full of the sparkle of gold- 
fish, a winding labyrinth of leaves and trees — 
what could be prettier than the tiles ! I confess 
I was delighted with their coolness and purity of 
coloring and suggestion. The shops and houses 
in Lisbon are covered with them — sometimes 
a whole fagade, sometimes an entry-way or show- 
window or staircase, and the coolness thrown 
back by them is a delightful refreshment. The 
vicinity of the capital presents the same general 
aspect as Spain, except of course the magnifi- 
cent azure serpent of the Tagus, which twines 
in and out the land like a luminous cord to some 
immense curtain. The Tagus as if in a sort of 
contempt continues small so long as it lingers 
in Spain, but when it touches Portuguese soil ex- 
pands gloriously till at Lisbon ten thousand ships 
can anchor safely, and an unrivaled panorama 
of hill and field spreads on each side. 

We met little on the road to Cintra save wind- 
mills and asses without number, and carriages 
going or coming, with tourists to or from town. 
The wealthier classes of Lisbon make Cintra 
their midsummer sojourn. It is only fourteen 
miles from the capital, near the mouth of the 
Tagus. It is rather strange that no railway is 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 343 

in operation to connect the capital with it. One 
was attempted and abandoned a few years ago, 
and people are content either with these anti- 
quated diligences, or with paying the exorbitant 
charges of the Lisbon cab drivers (twenty-five 
shillings going and returning). Many miles are 
traversed through almost a desert, nothing save 
wind-mills flapping on the brown hill-sides, and 
here and there an aqueduct throwing its arches 
over a valley. At length the diligence climbs 
into keener air ; the ascent is continuous \ a 
glimpse of the distant Tagus-mouth is obtained, 
and then the sun-baked hills jealously intervene, 
and one is whisked on in choking dust for an- 
other hour. Suddenly a delightful arcade of trees 
is entered, long and shady and charming as a 
church aisle ; deep walls on each side festooned 
with ivy and green with moss ; waving branches 
above and around ; an ancient arched gateway ; 
a long Portuguese village, with horses and car- 
riages standing in the shade, another reach of 
ashen fields and scorched acclivities crowned 
with wind-mills stretching their skeleton sails in 
the windless air, as vividly azure as the tunics of 
Perugino's angels ; then another and another de- 
licious arcade of trees, with glimpses over into 
vast gardens full of lemons, myrtle, and fuchsia, 
as if one were winding through a great green, 
tubular bridge hanging in the blue air : then 



344 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

Cintra is reached, 'the most blessed spot in 
the habitable world,' exclaimed the phlegmatic 
Southey. There can be little doubt of it. It 
lies in my mind with two or three other views — 
like a sunrise from Vesuvius and an evening on 
Gibraltar : a sunny, leafy place, where the trickle 
of delightful water is alw^ays in one's ear and 
there are views such as nowhere else under 
heaven, not even from the Alhambra. The ter- 
race of the hotel, beneath which lies the town, — 
house-tops, church-steeple, and all, — commands 
such a view as Vasco da Gama must have gazed 
upon when he stood between the two seas and 
exclaimed ' O Mar ! ' (the Sea !) The terrace is 
overhung by horse-chestnuts, and the hotel is 
built on both sides of it with an iron gate in the 
centre. The whole mountain (from eighteen hun- 
dred to three thousand feet in height) is a mass 
of stairs, terraces, garden walls, and villas (one 
of which was built by Vathek Beckford), and is 
wrought into all these as minutely as a piece of 
ivory. What a contrast between this tropical 
wealth and that blazing Sind beyond the mount- 
ain ! Opposite our terrace rises the gloriously 
picturesque mass of the Portuguese Alhambra, 
— the palace, prison, chapel, and garden of Cin- 
tra, built and inhabited by the Moorish sultans, 
the favorite summer resort of Christian kings, 
rebuilt by Dom Joao I., and finished by Dom 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 345 

Manuel. Its external aspect is far more striking 
and characteristic than that of the Alhambra. 
It covers an entire hill by itself and in its curi- 
ous blending of Arabic and Christian styles — 
its groups of graceful ajimez windows with the 
horse-shoe arch and pillar between, contrasting 
here and there with a groined ceiling or a pointed 
ogive — gives a quaint interest to the pile which 
is not found in the Alhambra. It is literally a 
pile, clustered richly on its hill-top, one side of 
which is deep in impenetrable green, and the 
other looks out on a long, paved court-yard with 
a series of conventual looking buildings to one 
side. The court is entered by a huge, arched 
gateway guarded by a soldier, and the palace by 
a staircase to one side rather hard to find. The 
interior is almost entirely plain and uninterest- 
ing. The brick floors are covered with creaking 
planks ; a few rooms have Moorish azidejos in 
many colors half-way up the walls ; here and 
there quaint and antic doors representing ser- 
pents, fruits, and flowers intertwined ; a fine 
marble mantel sculptured by Michael Angelo ; 
numerous rooms filled with modern furniture cov- 
ered to keep out dust and moths, and a hideous 
chapel with roof of inlaid wood in lead-color and 
maroon, intermingled with bunches of gilt grapes 
and stars, are found. The most interesting parts 
of the palace are the kitchen, the Hall of Swans 



346 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the Hall of Magpies, and the Hall of Scutch- 
eons, — above all the perfect garden that lies 
in great masses of bloom terraced along one 
side of the hill ; the whole place, palace, gar- 
dens and all, is perforated, so to speak, with a 
most curious system of water-works. In one 
room, glazed, wall and floor, with tiles that al- 
most have the brightness of precious stones, is a 
beautiful Moorish fountain and basin ; while you 
are gazing in delight at it, the vicious little thing 
spirts a minute jet all over the apartment, and 
you retire discomfited. Again the slow-witted 
cicerone brings you into a large court-yard con- 
taining another fountain made of most graceful, 
twisted columns, surmounted by a jumble of imps 
and angels ; then there is a great square of illu- 
mined sky ; then a suite of ajimez windows ; the 
whole spot a pool of golden sunlight and poetry, 
with such beatitude in the air that you would 
never leave if you could help it. Then a trickle 
is heard ; you glance to one side, and lo ! a huge 
china boudoir^ brave with pictured blue and white 
tiles, wherein a mimic rain-storm has begun, ceil- 
ing, floor, sides, angles, all seem to rain fine jets 
of water, and the marble floor is soon a pavement 
of water sparkles. 

Such are some of the legacies of the Moors. 
And there is a large tank built for the swans, 
sent to a Portuguese queen, which were at one 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 347 

time a great curiosity. One of the most curious 
apartments has a ceiling entirely inlaid with fig- 
ures of snow-white swans, with reversed golden 
crowns around their necks. In another you 
glance up and see an aviary of magpies, each 
magpie holding a scroll in its beak with the leg- 
end For Bern (In good part) written on it — the 
reply given by Dom Joao I. to his queen, Philippa 
of England, on being discovered in the act of 
kissing one of the maids of honor, whereupon the 
present curious painted roof was ordered as a 
sort of satire on the royal cordiality. The Hall 
of Scutcheons is also called the Hall of Stags, 
and contains a ceiling covered with the coats of 
arms of seventy-four Portuguese noble families, 
two spaces being empty on account of the trea- 
son of the houses of Tavora and Aveiro to 
Jose I. 

The entrance to the queen's apartments con- 
tains a rich window full of painted glass ; after 
which follow her bed-chamber, dressing-room, and 
parlor, with no end of presses, wardrobes, silk- 
padded fauteuils, divans, etageres, piles of mat- 
tresses, cases of old china, and common tables, 
chairs, whitewash, and yellow-papered walls. The 
whole building is thus a mixture : one moment 
you fancy yourself in one of Baedeker's hotels 
not marked with a star ; you stare at numbered 
rooms, wooden floors, rickety beds and lounges, 



348 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

winding passages, and ill-lighted entry-ways ; 
then you draw up before an interesting historical 
relic like the prison of Dom Aifonso, or the huge 
kitchen with its enormous steeple-like flues which 
give so bizarre an appearance to one side of the 
palace-crowned hill. These flues are at first a 
puzzle; they look like church spires or the vats 
of a porcelain manufactory, and stand together 
in close neighborhood with the Moorish windows 
and pavilions, in a manner entirely nondescript. 
One would not have them away for the world, 
however, such piquancy and peculiarity do they 
give to the mass of brick, marble, and stone 
to which they are attached. The jewel of the 
whole aggregation — for aggregation it is — is 
the marvel of a garden which clings to one side 
of it, and has been dug out and terraced with 
boundless pains and taste. No pen is equal to 
the views from its arbors and summer-houses. 
Through an empty window-frame, beneath which 
on each side is a marble seat, to one side a basin 
full of glittering water and gold-fish, overarched 
by a wicker-work of vines translucent from below 
as the sun strikes them, the Atlantic is seen, 
serene as another Heaven ; to the left the zigzag 
mountains of Cintra crowned by the Hieronymite 
convent and the Moorish castle ; beneath gar- 
dens, villas, a vast undulating plain laid out like 
a map, so remote that only its masses of white 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 349 

houses can be descried as they are congregated 
into hamlets and villages ; above, the Palace of 
Cintra reached by the eye as it climbs through 
a vision of splendid dahlias, plumbago, geraniums, 
crimson Virginia creeper, honeysuckle, and every 
sweet-scented flower and glossy leaf, truly a de- 
lightful scene. Then the keen point to the air 
after the heated theatre air of the plains below, 
is alone compensation for the diligence journey, 
the dust, and the dreariness of the road. 

The Palace of Cintra, however, is far from be- 
ing all ; it is perhaps the least in this exquisite 
mountain nook. Wandering entirely by chance 
along a road which I noticed other people follow- 
ing, and which ascended gradually and wound 
gently upward, I came on another terrace with 
parapet, stone seats, and water bursting from 
the mountain-side into a mighty basin. Here 
a rest ; then on and on up, past one country- 
house after another ; a church or two, seats, par- 
apets, water-tanks, and deserted houses, into a 
green and meandering road full of warm spice- 
smells and piney slopes. Huge granite bowlders 
covered with ivy, lichen, fern, and moss soon over- 
hung the deep road, and beneath them seats had 
been formed in various places and shadowy re- 
cesses to rest in. Then arrival at the gates of a 
palace, to which the road led, where a guide in 
Phrygian cap (such as you see in Canova's sculpt- 



350 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ure and all over Catalonia), took some others 
and myself in charge, and became the knight 
that heralded to us all the glories and legends 
and antiquities of the spot ; how this and that 
spot was celebrated, and for what; how Dom 
Fernando, after the suppression of the Hierony- 
mite convent on this granite hill, converted it 
into a Moorish-Gothic castle and adorned it won- 
drously with towers and battlements, delicate 
Moorish arches and traceries, terraces, pictures ; 
how the spot was full of the spirit and the mem- 
ories of Vasco de Gama, whose colossal statue 
with spear and shield was pointed out on a lofty 
rock, near which his long absent vessels were de- 
scried returning from their great voyage ; how 
there were painted windows figuring Vasco on his 
knees, the Virgin above him, and his faithful ships 
by his side, — all this and much more beguiled 
the way up the hill, till we actually reached the 
Pena Palace and its most voluptuous of earthly 
situations. 

The hill appears conical, and is everywhere 
transformed into a garden, winding spirally up, 
with such a circle and wire-work of walks, through 
pink and purple avenues of hydrangeas as only a 
king can charm into being with his Spanish gold. 
If the view from the Palace of Cintra is lovely, 
this is transcendent ; the whole of Portugal seems 
to be at your feet, framed on one side by the At- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 35 I 

lantic, which at this moment was a perfectly se- 
rene and silken volume of illuminated water, 
most magically still. The Tagus, with a crescent 
of beach just beyond, was absolutely distinct, 
and a large steamer was just entering it, look- 
ing, from where we were, like a toy ship drawn 
by a loadstone in a basin of water. Lisbon lay 
lay along it for four or five miles ; Cintra, town 
and palace, was far beneath ; Mafra, the Esco- 
rial of Portugal, was visible, and a net-work of 
interlacing high-roads and habitations, all lying 
beneath us, like bits of marvelous still-life. The 
view changed every moment as we wandered 
from parapet to parapet of the palace, round 
tower after tower, in and out the intricacies of 
the Gothic battlements. From these serene pin- 
nacles the world was a lovely dream : it was 
all so thoroughly and charmingly idealized : it 
seemed impossible to descend again and grapple 
with the every-day world. 

* Lo ! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes, 
In variegated maze of mount and glen ; 
Ah me, what hand can pencil guide, or pen, 
To follow half on which the eye dilates.' 

But descend we must ; and a ramble through the 
convent-palace, to visit the fine carved windows 
and doors, the alabaster screen of the chapel 
with its transparent deUcacy and filminess of ex- 
ecution, — carved into a beauty resembling a 



352 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

mass of white japonicas with light behind, — 
proved not uninteresting. 

Then the chatty old Carthaginian took us 
through the gardens, where geraniums, camellias, 
and Brazilian colias grew in thickets (a rare rose 
here and there), and where often the shadows 
lay so deep that the sunshine, which trickled 
through, was whitened into moonlight, till one 
looked up into the illumined green ceiling above 
and caught the leaves palpitating like the throat 
of the summer chameleon, all green-gold with the 
subtle light. Truly, Meander itself could not sur- 
pass these walks in their winding desires. Every- 
where water (in the Land of No-Water !), in pipes, 
tiles, troughs, or gathered into sunlit reservoirs, 
or flowing from under arbors thatched with pine- 
straw, or beneath a Moorish dome, such as one 
sees in Mahometan cemeteries : water, water down 
the loveliest cascades of ferns and moss and 
cresses, stealing in silvery embarrassment away 
from human sight into spaces, where nymphs and 
fairies dance before the nimble imagination, and 
there is hardly ever a flicker of scaring sunshine. 
And in the heart of the Pena garden is its heart 
of hearts, where there is flame and odor from 
summer to summer, a perpetual shrine of Vesta 
and Proserpine : the flower-maze and conservato- 
ries. It was quite delightful to come out into all 
this fragrance and floral illumination, glowing as 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 353 

it did, like a lamp, with every conceivable color. 
Here it looked as if all the imprisoned beauty of 
the soil had played a radiant trick on its jailer, 
and suddenly broken bounds, the Undine of 
flower-sprites. With longing eyes we hung over 
the richness of this spot. Our lady companion 
picked a white Lamarque and secreted it in her 
pocket, while her husband engaged the guide in 
conversation. We all drank now and again of 
the natural ice-water flowing from the rocks. 
There was not the least sense of exhaustion ; we 
were in such pure air, so high up. At the gates, 
a few coppers (of enormous weight : get a carpet- 
bag instead of a purse, for Portuguese money !) 
satisfied the guide, who was far from being aware 
what intense pleasure he had given us all, and 
then I took the road on down the hill, after a 
courteous invitation from my Portuguese com- 
panions to partake of their lunch. 

Such are but two of the bright pages of Cintra. 
W^alks to see the sun rise and set, moonlit strolls 
along the deep roads, with high stone walls on 
the sides, debouching on terraces, each com- 
manding far-stretching landscapes; visits to the 
old palace, near which Marshal Junot and the 
Duke of Wellington signed the convention of 
1808, which prevented the French invasion; the 
quiiita of the poet-navigator, Dom Joao de Cas- 
tro, where there is a chapel containing the heart 



354 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

of the great sailor ; the cork convent, with its 
twenty cells, lined with cork to keep out moist- 
ure j Mafra and its palace, its mausoleums, its 
marbles, belfry, clocks, and bells ; its 5,000 doors, 
Z(i(i rooms, and space on the roof for 10,000 sol- 
diers ; an oblong of heroic proportions, designed 
in imitation of the Escorial : enough for a sum- 
mer at Cintra alone ! 



XVIL 

As filhas do Mondego a morte escura 
Longo tempo chorando memoraram ; 
E, por memoria eterna, em fonte piira 
As lagriraas choradas transformaron : 
O nome Ihe pozeram, que inda dura, 
Dos Amores de Ignez, que alii passaram. 
Vede que fresca fonte rega os flores, 
Que lagrimas sao a agua, e o nome amores A 

Camoens, Os Lusiadas, Canto iii. 

A NIGHT train from Lisbon brought me to 
Coimbra. It was too dark to see more than the 
brimming Tagus, which we followed for many 
miles under the rays of the waning moon, now 
hanging like a golden half-lemon over the water. 
The night was so fresh that I almost forgot I was 
in Portugal. Indeed, Lisbon is famed for its in- 
equalities of temperature. Nothing could be 
pleasanter than the weather during my stay. The 

1 Mondego's daughters mourned her fate obscure, 

And as they mourned did cherish it long time : 
In ever-living sign a fountain pure 

Urned of their tears transformed : the cunning rime 
The nymphs wrought for it while the ages dure 

Was ^ Inez' Love,' that passed amid that clime : 
Lo, many a flower sprent with dew above, — 

'T is dew of tears : the fountain's name is Love. 



356 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 



1 

i frofl^ 



extreme heat of Spain is unknown, and 
every slope and hill-side up which a street ran 
came refreshing draughts, recalling the early sum- 
mer. If the summer temperature is always what 
I have experienced, I should decidedly pronounce 
for Portugal in the dog-days. The Atlantic is so 
near, and the mountains so high, that ever}^ 
breeze is laden with coolness. The early drive 
from Cintra to Lisbon almost rendered an over- 
coat necessary. But fortunately we had the wind 
(and alas ! the beautiful palace too) at our backs. 
Coimbra is the Oxford of Portugal. There is 
an ancient university here, composed of eighteen 
or twenty colleges, and attracting from one thou- 
sand to twelve hundred students annually. Orig- 
inally Lisbon was the site of the university, but 
it was removed hither by Dom Joao III., and 
here it has stuck ever since — a miracle of plain- 
ness and ugliness on its plateau, high up above 
the town. It is redeemed, however, by the arches 
of a splendid old aqueduct which throw their 
graceful spans in among the university trees and 
give an air of high antiquity to the modern look- 
ing buildings. To one side is a handsome ter- 
race, which looks down upon a pretty botanical 
garden, full of walks, tanks, and hot-houses. In 
one tank a water-lily spread its huge leaves and 
one lustrous starry blossom, gold in the centre, 
with lilac apices, lay on its mirrored disk. As 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 357 

usual, immense clusters of dahlias and heliotrope, 
feathery palms and waving bananas, Brazilian 
pines and monkey-trees. It is a beautiful scene : 
the noble arches of the aqueduct high over head, 
then the terrace, then the colored carpet-like 
masses of the botanic garden, then the olive-bor- 
dered Mondego far beneath, most richly edged 
and framed in with cane, corn, hedges, and Lom- 
bardy poplars, while on the opposite heights a 
line of vast conventual buildings runs along, 
surmounted by bell-towers and crosses. The 
students, without hats and in long black robes, 
walked and talked about in the quadrangles^ or 
paced up and down with serious and meditative 
mien. Groups of professors, in the usual every- 
day-dress, stood about and chatted. * The univer- 
sity system at Coimbra is professorial, as in Ger- 
many and Scotland ; not tutorial, as at our two 
great universities. There is a small literary fact 
connected with one of its professors in the six- 
teenth century, which may interest our men of let- 
ters at home. The celebrated George Buchanan 
was for some years a professor at Coimbra. 
There is every probability of his having been the 
friend and instructor — for he was twenty-two 
years his elder — of the great Portuguese poet 
Ferreira, the precursor of Camoens, who polished, 
refined, and classicized the Portuguese language, 
almost to the same extent that Pope and Dryden 



358 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

did our own tongue. That the essentially clas- 
sical Ferreira should have availed himself of the 
instructions of a man like Buchanan — the most 
brilliant scholar of his century, and the best writer 
of Latin prose since the age of Tacitus and Vir- 
gil — is so probable as to be akin to certainty.' ^ 

The hill is wound round and round by roads, 
each ascending above the other (like the succes- 
sive coils of an old French coiffure), until the 
summit is attained, which opens into a quaint 
square, fronted on one side by a large Roman- 
esque church, and on the other by a large brick 
building, painted red and surmounted by a figure 
of the Virgin, all glittering in rays and glories. 
From below, from the pretty promenade on the 
river bank, the compact and serried mass of 
buildings, rising one above the other, has a very 
striking aspect. On my way up I dropped in at 
the Se Velha^ or old cathedral (there are two), 
supposed to have been built on the site of a 
mosque. It has a fine entrance, richly carved 
screen, and seats covered with blue azulejo tiles 
which make the blood run cold. It is another 
vision of the bottom of an old china dish, mag- 
nified to the size of the wall of a church, but 
none the less common-looking for all that. 
Another church has some carved choir-stalls, 
tombs of early Portuguese kings, cloisters in the 
1 Latouche's Portugal. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 359 

flamboyant style, and a sanctuary full of relics of 
Dom Henriques and Dom Affonso. What most 
captivated my eye was the crowd of peasants 
about the streets in gala-costume. Very striking 
and picture-like were the groups of women in 
their black or dark-blue short-gowns, vividly em- 
broidered bodices, elegant old-fashioned ear-rings 
and lockets, and astonishing black sombreros. 
There they sat or stood in sombre clusters eating 
or minding their wares, some of them dispensing 
with the huge sombrero and having the head cov- 
ered with a spanking silk handkerchief. The 
antique Moorish jewelry they wear — moon- 
shaped gold ear-rings of immense size and weight, 
solid or filigree — is an heirloom from the Moors. 
It is in admirable contrast with the fine dark olive 
faces, lustrous eyes and hair, and dark petticoats. 
Their hats are exactly like the men^s except that 
black velvet bands and bows are substituted for 
the tufts generally worn by the men. Booths are 
spread along the river side and ceremonious bar- 
tering has been going on all the morning. Below, 
in the wide vale formed by the nearly empty river, 
stand strange Portuguese boats laden with fire- 
wood and pine boughs ; flags flutter over impro- 
vised shops and booths, and knots of women 
wash and sing as they stand beside the limpid 
streams flowing here and there through the wide 
river-bed. Dozens and dozens of them go down 



360 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

the stairs to the river side with water- jugs pre 
cisely like those taken from Pompeii — big-bel- 
lied, slender-stemmed, such as the Greek girls 
bear to the fountains, — and when they are filled 
from the river, poise them most gracefully on 
their heads and wend their way homeward, with- 
out more forethought. How like Caryatides some 
of them look with these antique jars statuesquely 
balanced over the jetty hair, and wide, lustrous 
eyes looking out curiously from beneath. The 
students need not study Michaelis' plates, for 
here are Greek scenes enough. And then at 
Lisbon the antique chariots, with wooden wheels 
turning the whole axle, drawn by gigantic steers 
and guided by Gallegos in Phrygian^ cap and with 
the ancient goad, — what recollections they recall 
of pictures in classical dictionaries and passages 
in Virgil or Theocritus ! All the environs of 
Coimbra are richly wooded, which is a rare treat 
in this peninsula. The old place was once the 
capital, and the Cid had something to do in the 
pre-historic times with wresting it from the armed 
infidel ; then it rose to new celebrity in the Pen- 
insula war, during which Massena's forces were 
routed in the vicinity by the Iron Duke (that sec- 
ond Cid, whom one meets as everlastingly as the 
effigies of Ferdinand and Isabella in Andalusia). 
Here, of all places, is the spot to learn Portu- 
guese in its purity, — to master the intricacies of 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 36 1 

the syntax, the dedined infinitive, the Latin-Uke 
pluperfect indicative, and gerund, the sixteen 
diphthongs and six nasals, with sounds as diffi- 
cult as Russian, or that exist, perhaps, in Chinese 
alone. Here, under this professorial inquisition, 
is the spot most carefully to guard against the two 
thousand Brazilian upstarts that have insinuated 
themselves into Portuguese diction since the dis- 
covery of Brazil. Here is the spot to learn the 
taboo put upon many Portuguese words which it is 
not good taste for ears polite to hear, or tongues 
to utter, such as swine^ and others ; as a pendant 
to which our euphemistic American linibs^ casket^ 
etc., may be mentioned : a practice which pro- 
hibits the king from being called by his name in 
certain countries, and in others, the wives from 
pronouncing the first letter in the names of their 
husbands. Here, too, you may learn to address 
your tailor or your shoemaker as ' his illustrious 
lordship,' and hear the newsboys calling each 
other ' Your honor ; ' or you may observe the rich 
steak of Jewish blood running through the na- 
tion, or listen on summer or winter nights to a 
thousand superstitions of were-wolves, white 
women, or phantom horsemen. 

A great interest centres round Coimbra from 
the tender and romantic story of Inez de Castro. 
Over the river is the haunted looking Villa of 
Tears {Quinta das Lagrimas)^ where she was 



362 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

treacherously murdered by her husband's father 
in his very presence. She had been secretly 
married to the Infante Dom Pedro, when Dom 
Aifonso IV., his father, caused her to be seized 
and put to death. Many a famous poem and 
legend have gathered their amber about this 
great tragedy of love and death, and embalmed 
it in verse. The chateau lies near the river 
bank, with a great orange-garden in front, and 
an olive grove behind. It is without chimneys, 
and is painted a vivid yellow, and there are spa- 
cious pleasure-grounds to one side, with a spring, 
overshadowed by some grand cedars, called the 
Fountain of Love. On one of the trees is the in- 
scription in Portuguese : ' Eu dei sombra a Ifiez 
formosa ' (I gave shade to lovely Inez). The 
most famous account of the story is the episode 
in the third canto of the Lusiads of Camoens, — 
the great poet, of whom a fellow poet wrote : — 
' Nem o humilde logar onde reposiam 
As cinzas de Camoes, conhece o Luso.' 

^ Not even the humble spot where rest the ashes 
of Camoens is known to the Portuguese.' 

The story goes that Dom Pedro rose against 
his father, ascended the throne, and put the mur- 
derers to death \ and fair Inez, after lying seven 
years in the grave, was disinterred, and crowned 
Queen of Portugal, while all swore fealty to her. 
Her body lay in the cloister of Santa Anna, near 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 363 

by, — now in sad and strange decay. There is a 
mournful sweetness in the summer air about the 
old palace ; sleepy shepherds pasture their black 
and white sheep under the lindens ; the Mondego 
has a gentle and regretful murmur as it hurries 
by the blood-stained spot ; the rich field of wav- 
ing Indian-corn in front is full of whispers and 
harmonies, breathed strangely on the yellow air ; 
grapes hang over the wall, and press their jew- 
eled wine out on it as a memorial libation to the 
savage story, and the cedars that overhang the 
Fountain of Love are sweet and low as marriage- 
flutes on the widowed wind. What grace and 
genius and grandeur there are in this troubled 
story ! 



XVIII. 

*T is time to sail, — the swallow's note is heard, 
Who, chattering down the soft west wind is come, 
The fields are all a-flower, the waves are dumb, 

Which erst the winnowing blast of winter stirred. 

Loose cable, friend, and bid your anchor rise. 

Anthology. 

This is my last day in Portugal, and a very 
proper place to spend it. There are few sites 
more attractive than the mountains (they are 
hardly hills) along which Oporto extends, with 
the bright Douro far beneath, and the thickly 
wooded opposite heights rising covered with vine- 
yards, convents, and manufactories. Oporto is 
the second city of the realm in importance and 
population, and is the capital of the densely peo- 
pled wine-province of Minho. The O in its name 
is the Portuguese definite article ; hence the 
name of the place is, simply, The Port, like Le 
Havre. It is a common thing in Portuguese to 
have the article accompanying the name of a 
place, A Bahia (The Bay), O Cairo (The Vic- 
torious), and others. Oporto has plenty of life 
with its 120,000 busy people, its docks, quays, 
ships, and wine stores. The sea is but five miles 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 365 

off, hence the delightful temperature. Yesterday 
and this morning it absolutely rained. One can 
hardly, without having summered in Spain, con- 
ceive the refreshment in the word. The dust is 
laid, and the neighboring fields and elevations 
have a glorious green. For heights and depths, 
ups and downs, compare Oporto with Edinburgh 
or Toledo. And yet, in spite of it all, an admi- 
rable system of street-cars exists, which pene- 
trates the city in many directions, while as many 
as five mules are sometimes employed in pulling 
the trams. These railways traverse the principal 
streets, and extend to the pleasant suburbs. The 
houses rise in tiers amphitheatre-like, and along 
the river side there are two most beautiful prom- 
enades, one high above the other. From the up- 
per one a singularly charming prospect opens up 
the Douro, which is spanned by the thread of a 
railway bridge, with one superb arch beneath ; 
beyond which, soft green meadows, waving corn- 
fields, and wooded heights are set, as in a most 
lovely curve, intersected half-way by the green 
sheet of the river. The other is the famous Rua 
dos Inglezes, or English Promenade, which ex- 
tends from the foot of the Street of Flowers out 
to the baths of Cadouco and Foz, through long 
avenue of elms. There are few more charm- 
ing promenades, and at the end the royal At- 
lantic beats white and thunderous against an an- 



366 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

cient fortress, and the rocky sea-side resorts just 
mentioned. There is a line of villages here form- 
ing the Brighton of Oporto, only far more bright 
and winning than the dingy English watering- 
place. The beach is covered with bathing-suits 
put out to dry, booths, bath-houses, and bathers. 
The smell of the salt sea is sweeter than any per- 
fume, and the divine wealth of curling, surfy 
water that rolls in at one's feet, so endlessly 
varied in color, form, and mass, is an infinite de- 
light to a lover of sea sights and sounds. The 
country all around Oporto is covered with pines 
and Indian-corn; and the river is lined, for a 
hundred miles up, with villas, vineyards, and 
port-wine storehouses. The drawing seems all 
done by immense, dull-eyed, long-horned steers, 
often driven by little girls and boys, and held to- 
gether by a most curiously carved Moorish yoke. 
The same wooden wheels and chariot-like shape, 
as at Lisbon, are seen in the vehicles they draw. 
One of the curiosities of Oporto is the Street 
of Flowers, lined on one side by small goldsmiths' 
shops, in which is seen a rare display of fanciful 
Moorish jewelry, — great filigree hearts, stars, 
medallions, links, earrings, bishops' rings set 
in opal, amethyst, or chrysolite, sixteenth cent- 
ury repousse work in silver, and the marigold 
gleam of Brazilian topazes ; others quaint and 
massy, some inlaid with scenes from Holy Writ, 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 367 

many of astonishing size. They are identical 
with those worn by the peasant women of Coim- 
bra, and are of a workmanship peculiar to this 
part of Portugal. The gold of which they are 
made is well known for its purity, and the work- 
ers are men in whose families the profession has 
been for generations, just as the Jews of Amster- 
dam have monopolized diamond cutting, and the 
men who keep up the repairs of St. Peter's are 
said to form an hereditary guild. What a contrast 
between the sombre-gowned, dark-faced peasant 
woman, with short vivid black hair and eyes, and 
weighty sombrero, and her jewel-laden ears and 
neck, — not to mention the basket of stale fish she 
carries on her head ! There is nothing in the least 
to remind one of Tizian's masterpiece, and yet 
this too is a picture worthy of the great Venetian. 
There is something gipsy-like in the intensely 
dark faces of these women, with their coarse 
Indian hair, wrinkles, and melodious voices. The 
street cries of Lisbon are often strangely sweet ; 
and from what poor little stunted women — lit- 
erally compressed into a sort of human parallelo- 
gram by the perpetual carrying — these cries is- 
sue ! The vast deal of carrying and street crying 
done in Spain and Portugal by men, women, and 
children is a constant surprise. Probably it arises 
from more than the mere necessity of living, from 
the indolence of purchasers who — such is the ef- 



368 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

feet of elimate — might not eonsent to live at all 
were their food not brought to them. At any rate 
Oporto, Lisbon, and the Spanish cities are filled 
from daylight till dark with these two-legged 
perambulating markets lifting up their voices in 
constant warning to the sweet no thing-to-do-ers. 
There are of course markets everywhere in the 
great cities, — and places of intense animation 
they are too, — but whatever is left over from 
them seems to be cried about the streets to the 
delectation of all concerned. Add to this the 
needy knife-grinders, brass-and-copper kettle 
menders, and hawkers of maps and lottery-tick- 
ets, and a Spanish or a Portuguese town becomes 
anything but a * golden tumult.' As for the 
jaunty cab-drivers of Oporto and other cities, 
they are perfectly unscrupulous, and belong to 
the worst of their kind. Their watch-word is ex- 
tortion. Sometimes (as in a case which occurred 
while I was in Lisbon) they follow their demands 
by threats and blows. The traveler can always 
avoid them, however, by inquiring his way to the 
central ticket-office in the city, where there is al- 
ways an excellent line of omnibuses in communi- 
cation with the train, and at prices which are ex- 
tremely moderate. The purchase of a first-class 
ticket entitles one to a seat in the omnibus, and 
to a certain amount of luggage, and the price 
of the omnibus ticket is seldom more than ten 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 369 

cents. The cabman will extort his dollar with the 
greatest impudence; and further woes may be 
expected if the over-anxious traveler step into 
cabby's parlor without first making a bargain. 
It is, however, the same all the world over. 

Characteristically, of the eighty thousand or so 
pipes of wine annually made in the province of 
which Oporto is the capital, not a drop is found 
on the table d'hbte^ John Bull absorbing nearly if 
not quite nine tenths of it. Cintra, Oporto, and 
Gibraltar are the only places in the peninsula 
where I have not found wine lavishly served at 
breakfast and dinner. The English tradespeople 
are magnificent creatures : they must have all or 
none, and interference is an insult to ^ free trade.' 
The slopes, walls, and terraces of Oporto are 
draped in the richest vines. The country is near 
enough the Alpish region of Galicia and Asturias 
to be blessed with showers, and ample verdure is 
the result. A curious anachronism in all this in- 
tensely southern region is the wooden-bottomed 
slippers, with uppers of leather, worn by the lower 
classes. You hear a perpetual clatter from them, 
up and down the steep, flagged pavements and 
streets of the city. They are without back pieces, 
and the foot is simply slipped into them Turkish 
fashion ; the result being a very awkward gait, 
recalling street scenes in Belgium. 

One does not notice essential differences be- 
24 



370 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

tween Portuguese and Spanish, except that the 
former are stiller and darker people, rather slow- 
witted, superstitious, commercial and courteous, 
who in spite of their prolonged intercourse with 
England know no English, and not much beyond 
their saints' calendars. It is a significant cir- 
cumstance that Shakspere is being translated into 
Portuguese and Chinese simultaneously. The 
book-stalls are lined with French and Spanish 
books ; guide-books to the country, unless writ- 
ten in Portuguese, I found it almost impossible 
to get ; and I had really some difficulty in Lis- 
bon in finding a Portuguese grammar. The co- 
quettish mantilla, which gives so much grace to 
Spanish women, disappears entirely as soon as 
the line is crossed : ugly Paris hats and bonnets 
succeed ; and in the number of advertisements 
of ships sailing to Brazil, etc., one sees at once 
how the Portuguese who travel have come to be 
more cosmopolitan in character and dress than 
their prejudiced neighbors who do not. The 
decided improvement in the hotel fare is also a 
sure sign of superior civilization, and the abhor- 
rence in which the Portuguese hold a genuine 
ioros de muerte bull-fight is another. The lan- 
guage is very soft and pleasant and resembles 
French of the Limousin type, being perhaps less 
stately but more melodious than the Spanish. 
Portuguese grammar presents some very interest- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 37 1 

ing peculiarities and many close resemblances to 
the mother Latin, so that a piece of fourth cent- 
ury Latin and a paragraph of Portuguese placed 
side by side are quite startlingly alike. A singu- 
larly interesting feature, of the utmost value phil- 
ologically, is the resolution of the future and con- 
ditional present into their constituent elements 
when a pronoun is used as object. The same 
thing occurred frequently in old Spanish. It is 
known that the Romance future and conditional 
come from composite Latin forms, the infinitive 
present being prefixed respectively to the present 
and imperfect of the Latin verb habere (to have), 
to form future and conditional ; aimer-ai^:=:^ amare 
habeo. In Portuguese / shall write^ etc., \^ escre- 
verei^ but if a pronoun — the reflexive of the 
third person for example — be found as object, 
this may follow the first element escrever (which 
is an infinitive) ; to which it is then added, joined 
by a hyphen, and followed by the rest of the 
form; the only divergence being that in these 
terminations from habeo the original h of the 
Latin verb reappears, escrever-se->^a (it will 
write itself, be written) ; confirmation enough — 
if the case needed one — of the etymology of the 
Romance future and conditional. The strong 
nasalization of the original Latin is another pe- 
culiarity, the substitution of m for n (um for un)^ 
of r for / in Spanish and Arabic words (praga for 



372 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

p/aza), are other marked tendencies. The pre- 
dominance of nasals in both brings the spoken 
language quite near the French in sound. Span- 
iards and Portuguese of the educated classes can 
understand one another, though the differences 
in words for familiar things are considerable. 
Here the four centuries of Arabic have had con- 
siderable play and left deep traces in the Port- 
uguese. A Portuguese lady assured me with 
much gravity that the languages were altogether 
different, but her philological knowledge did not 
extend beyond an occasional rather piercing cur- 
tain lecture to her lord and master, who would 
forget himself and address the Spanish railway 
officials in his native tongue. The Brazilians 
have further softened the Portuguese, just as 
the Hispano-Americans have done the Castilian. 
The Brazilians even claim to speak better Portu- 
guese than the Portuguese themselves. 

Portugal is full of negroes. You see plenty of 
* Aunties ' and * Uncles ' ; and an American is 
fully possessed with the notion, from his own as- 
sociations, that they must all speak English, till 
he addresses one, and gets a stare of real Ethi- 
opian wonder in return. In Spain they are very 
rare, except in seaports like Cadiz. The Spanish 
of the provinces and the country apply * Aunt ' 
and * Uncle ' to almost any man or woman be- 
yond middle age, just as the custom is in the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 373 

South, with the negroes. The Sicilians do the 
same. 

In spite of the excellent food in the principal 
cities, Portugal is very backward in hotel accom- 
modation. In the busy, thriving town of Oporto, 
for example, the best hotel is a den kept by an 
Englishwoman, built half a century or more ago, 
and wretchedly furnished. The same is the case 
in Lisbon and Cintra. At Coimbra, the hotel 
was purely and simply disgusting ; we had to 
pass the kitchen, which was radiant with brass 
and copper kettles, to reach the dining-room, but 
through a series of tortuosities equal to the orna- 
mentation of the old black-letter. When you got 
a view, it was of something horrible, except that 
from the rickety balcony adjoining my cell the 
eye could feast on the pretty Mondego, the bright 
fair with its tableau-like groups ; and beyond, a 
garden of glossy-leaved orange-trees, now out of 
fruit and bloom. The head-waiter was an ex- 
act image of an antique bust of Socrates. Ar- 
riving at such a place after a long and devious 
walk through dimly-illuminated streets, at four 
o'clock in the morning, and with a peculiarly wild- 
looking porter to carry my luggage, qne can im- 
agine my feelings at seeing the house, the Socratic 
vision appearing at an upper window, demand- 
ing who was there ; and above all, the aspect 
and experiences of {he Hieronymite cell itself ; 



374 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

all this in contrast with the solid silver knives and 
forks, of antique design, with which we were fur- 
nished at breakfast and dinner. Taking these 
four large cities as typical, accommodation in 
Portugal is at the lowest. 



XIX. 

'Go on, go on, It is alike the Paradise of Nature and of Art,' — and 
they took courage and went on, and found it, as so many thousands of 
travelers have done since, the most perfectly beautiful place in the 
world. — Hare. 

La Granja is a true ch&teau en Espagne^ a cas- 
tle in the air nearly four thousand feet above the 
sea, an airy Versailles, hanging on the mountain- 
side in all the beauty and pride of a Spanish 
grandee, abandoned to solitude and decay. 

There is something most interesting in the 
glimpse of Versailles-like towers and spires which 
one gets when finally emerging from the mount- 
ain-side, and looking down on the plateau on 
which the palace is situated. It is a panorama of 
green trees, bright verdure, darkly-clothed mount- 
ain-slopes, runnels of gliding and glittering water, 
a boundless expanse of lilac and yellow llano be- 
neath, and far-sweeping avenues of poplars and 
elms, forth from all which peep the weather-cocks 
and steeples, belfries and pavilions of a Louis 
XVL chateau, slate-roofed, slit with innumerable 
windows, with grilled doors, graveled walks and 
sparkling fountains. How the air is laden with 



376 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

petunia and heliotrope and Madame de Genlis, 
all in one ! 

The approach to La Granja is by long-wind- 
ing avenues of pines, — thick-tufted, pale- leaved, 
yellow-bodied fellows, covered with lichens, and 
bathed knee-deep in brilliant bracken. It is 
a delightful drive down the Guadarram a mount- 
ains, with galloping mules, cracking postilions, 
and swearing zagaL The air is full of minute 
particles of frost, which sting the cheeks deli- 
ciously, and bring charming souvenirs of win- 
ter drives to their warm, tingling surfaces. The 
train is taken as far as Villalba, and then dili- 
gences are in waiting to convey passengers — to 
the clouds. I confess, the prospect of such a 
journey was most agreeable. The heat had be- 
come intolerable in Madrid. But visions of gur- 
gling rills, many-voiced fountains, blankets at 
night, murmuring pines, and majestic sierras flick- 
ered and floated in the warm Madrileno atmos- 
phere, and made the call to make a trial impera- 
tive. A curious thing about the matter is why 
the stupid Madrid people do not profit by these 
lovely piney glens and fastnesses, and, like the 
French, transform them into enchanting nooks 
for summer idling. But they prefer to welter in 
the heat and stench of their fussy Frenchy city ! 

La Granja would make a capital sojourning 
place for weary aristocracy and worn-out middle- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 37/ 

class. What a tonic there is in its bracing air ! 
There is an Alpine freshness and sweetness in it, 
and the palace garden is alive with flowers. A 
few strays of the diplomatic corps, — a wandering 
marquis, or misplaced attache, — are all that is 
met or seen of fashionable life in the place. The 
brick tiles, with which the houses of the town 
are covered, are as lonesome-looking as if they 
never harbored guests beneath their red cylin- 
ders. Grass grows in the streets; the booths 
are nearly all closed ; the hotels empty ; the very 
post-oflice, where one reads Correos in big let- 
ters, seems deserted and forlorn. The diligence 
comes rattling down the empty high-road, and 
only a few old women in yellow petticoats and 
crimson head handkerchief are there to receive it. 
A vast iron gate is entered, on each side of which 
is the usual monumental but not mute beggar, 
and the diligence draws up before the post door. 
As one enters the gate, a glimpse of the palace- 
fagade is caught in the distance running round 
three sides, with towers and chapel in the centre, 
hospitably throwing its arms about some fine 
beds of flowers. The place was once a farm or 
grange (whence the name), but was purchased by 
Philip V. and changed, to the tune of millions, 
into what is called in Spain a real sitio^ or royal 
demesne. It was here Queen Christina, just de- 
ceased, was compelled by some soldiers to sign 



3/8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

her abdication : and here, also, her daughter and 
successor, both as queen and abdicator, Isabel 
the Second, was fond of coming and bathing in 
one of the fountains, while various sentinels stood 
guard, to prevent the curious from seeing how a 
queen bathed. This and that kingly nobody lies 
buried, forgotten, in this remote nook of the pen- 
insula, having suffered that generous oblivion 
which posterity too readily accords to crowned 
insignificance. This castle in the air, which so 
many of them loved and labored on, is their en- 
during monument, — a sunny, silent place, full of 
sylvan tranquillities and poesies, going to decay, 
as it w^ould seem, like some hapless St. Cloud, 
yet, in its very decay, lovelier far than the splen- 
did original. The wide gates of the park are 
thrown open to the public, and one enters the 
spacious promenades almost alone, save for the 
troop of romances and intrigues, that dart out of 
every nook and corner, and people one's imagi- 
nation busily as the spacious avenues open and 
wheel in every direction. It is this very genius 
of pensive history which makes such an old spot 
so charming. Flowers and vases and fountains 
one can have any day, and for far less money ; 
but seldom so sweet a troop of light-footed asso- 
ciations and poetic reveries. The old palace is 
an eloquent picture in the rich August air. Cary- 
atids, Corinthian pillars, urns, and balconies, all 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 379 

seem bending beneath their weight of ghostly 
souvenirs. In the gardens the whole pagan my- 
thology has been disemboweled, and changed 
into pumps ! Olympus has become a Chateau 
d'Eau j the muses, graces, and goddesses are 
dancing streams of water, cascades, jets (Teau, 
Wherever you look, splendid heaps of bronze 
and marble, apparently afloat on the melted sil- 
ver of this Guadarrama mountain water, form 
themselves into vistas, and beckon fantastically 
through the green arcades. Urns of fruit in 
bronze, with climbing monkeys for handles, stand 
in rows on the balustraded terrace, and look 
down into the water. Beautiful white marble 
vases, sculptured with geniuses, dragons, coats of 
arms, foliage, and masks, glitter up and down the 
graveled beds, and alternate with floating and 
pirouetting mythological figures and winged gro- 
tesques, walks and drives, mazes and labyrinths, 
wondrous masses of clipped box, formed into 
bells, domes, and squares, spots radiant with 
chrysanthemums of every color, — that favorite 
of the Benchers of the Temple, — flights of mar- 
ble steps designed for falling water j long paral- 
lellograms of brilliant water formed into falls 
and cascades, emerald-green with reflected light 
from the overhanging trees ; marble seats, quaintly 
carved, and cold as ice under the bosky elms ; 
trellised hedges of endless variety ; circles and 



380 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

half-circles hollowed out of the umbrage, as it 
were, and furnished each with its glittering basin, 
griffins, sea-monsters, and tritons, — such are a 
few items in this fascinating garden in the air. 
The principal wing of the palace looks out on 
a cascade, down which the waters foam over 
\ariegated marbles, and the twisted and fan- 
tastic torsos of spouting and writhing animals. 
Before the palace is quite reached, the cascade 
ceases, and breaks, as if by magic, into a delight- 
ful flower-bed, which continues the silvery torrent 
in its own tumult of impetuous bloom. At each 
side dusky avenues extend, in which black-robed 
priests may be seen pacing the green graveled 
darkness, and meditating some soul-saving hom- 
ily for the Sunday, — 

* Ah, yet doth beauty like a dial hand, 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! ' 

A Step further, and there is a workman chip- 
ping the draperies of a marble statue ; others are 
tossing great beams of water over the trees and 
plants from huge hoses. Bees and yellow-jackets 
betray the presence of honey. Above, over the 
cascade, the invisible greens, and blues of the 
Guadarrama pines form a middle distance, while 
far above them tower the pinks and lilacs, the 
crags, and faint fantastic peaks of the Sierra, 
eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea : 
a solemn and singularly beautiful background for 
all this nimble water, earth, and air. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 38 I 

Days might be spent wandering over the cha- 
teau and grounds of La Granja. Green trees and 
grass are not so frequent in Spain that they can 
be passed by with indifference. And then the 
pranks and felicities of tiny mountain torrents 
with no other object in life than to throw them- 
selves in your way, and be spanned forthwith by 
most graceful bridges ! At long intervals the 
Guardia Civil are encountered, with their bright 
yellow straps, rifles, linen-covered caps, and dark 
blue uniforms, watching the road and keeping it 
free from brigands. 

La Granja is a stopping-place on the road to 
one of the most interesting cities in Spain, — Se- 
govia. It is a wonder that Segovia is not better 
known, the picture and image of what an old 
Castilian town used to be j walled, battlemented, 
and buttressed, to the delight of all artists, as it 
is. You descend gradually into the plain from 
La Granja until suddenly the city rises before you 
on its hill, towers, flamboyant cathedral, and all, 
for all the world like an ancient engraving of 
long-vanished times and places. Nothing could 
be more effective than the grouping; first the 
cathedral with its many pinnacles, and spire three 
hundred and thirty feet high, surmounting a high 
hill ; then clustering spires and towers from other 
churches a stage lower ; then glimpses of mediae- 



382 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

v^al houses and narrow streets huddled thickly 
about the centres of spiritual life ; then an an- 
cient amphitheatre almost complete, and last and 
most wonderful of all, the valley leapt by the 
grand aqueduct of Trajan, with arches in some 
places a hundred feet high, while through a gi- 
gantic network of arches are seen green groves, 
churches, city walls, and warm blue sky. You 
cannot conceive the grandeur of this aqueduct, 
certainly the most perfect in the world. It is 
built of gray and black granite, without cement, 
is many miles long, and near the convent of San 
Gabriel forms a bridge of three hundred and 
twenty arches. When Segovia was sacked by the 
Moors, they destroyed thirty-five arches, which 
were restored in 1483 by order of Isabella. But 
it is said the new arches can even now be dis- 
tinguished from the old by the inferiority of the 
workmanship, though a very able architect was 
employed to rebuild them. The water comes 
from the Rio Frio, and is capital. There is a 
double row of arches at Segovia, one superim- 
posed upon the other j and the whole has a look 
of immense age. The road enters the town under 
them, and very striking is the effect looking up 
and back at the towering structure. The dili- 
gence literally flew over the steep streets, seri- 
ously endangering the necks of both passengers 
and promenaders, and finally drew up in a square 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 383 

the strangest and oddest imaginable. Hogarth or 
Cruikshank alone could do it justice, for there is 
something positively humorous in its aged and 
outlandish houses, arcades, and the grand indif- 
ference with which the cathedral turns its back 
on the whole. There is not a hotel in the place, 
and for the first time since my arrival in Spain I 
am housed in a casa de huespedes^ or Spanish 
boarding-house. Houses with furnished or unfur- 
nished lodgings for rent hang out a paper at the 
corner or in the middle of the balcony, according 
as the apartments are or are not furnished. A 
casa de huespedes is far cheaper than a hotel, 
and for learning Spanish customs, traditions, hab- 
its, and ways of thought, of course far superior. 
Useful acquaintances are formed, introductions 
are obtained, and the rather intricate machinery 
of social life explained, to one's ease. The casa 
de huespedes (La Burgalesa) in which I am en- 
sconced at present squints at two churches and 
stares on the square. A bare-faced clock oppo- 
site tells the time at most unconscionable hours ; 
and beneath it, as in nearly every Spanish city, is 
written Flaza de la Constitucion ; which would all 
be very well if the thing existed. Beneath us, in 
the same house, is a casino and a dentist's estab- 
lishment, and beneath these, a restaurant and 
cafe ; so that we are well up among the swallows 
and church-steeples, too high even for the beg- 



384 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

gars to descry us with their ophthalmoscopes. 
Walking by chance through one of the streets, I 
saw an arched gate-way — Segovia still has mas- 
sive mediaeval gates with ponderous wooden doors 
— which led down through the Calle de la Luna 
(Street of the Moon), into a charming walk be- 
side the town walls. There was an extensive 
view down into the valley ; the walk was dotted 
wdth priests and artillery students, here in great 
force attending the artillery school ; and the 
green trees and wide open space were in sharp 
contrast with the dense, close structure of the 
town, the buildings, houses, cloisters, and tall 
steeples, observable everywhere within the walls. 
The cathedral is inimitable, — pure Gothic, 
lustrous with painted glass and pillars that shoot 
up to a great height before they radiate over the 
groined ceiling. The central nave rises ninety- 
nine feet, precious marbles and splendid gilt re- 
jas abound, and there is a lightness, purity, and 
grace about the interior which I have seldom 
seen in these great, massive Spanish cathedrals. 
There is no whitewash, and all is as it was ages 
ago. Perhaps there is not in all England such 
a cathedral, and Segovia is a place of perhaps 
fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants ! Such 
miracles could faith do. What would not one 
give to have such a cathedral — such a fountain 
of memories, munificences, prayers, and hopes — 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 385 

translated to our land to fix and solemnize our 
fickle people. Out in front of it are venerable 
grave-stones with armorial designs, crossed keys, 
and inscriptions in Latin and Spanish engraved 
on the flat slabs. It is a common thoroughfare, 
and thus the living walk over the heads of the 
dead. It is finer than Tarragona cathedral, and 
lighter and lovelier every way. A carved gallery 
runs around under the painted windows, and over 
the altar of the Capilla de la Piedad is a famous 
masterpiece of Juan de Juni, representing the 
Descent from the Cross, much admired and 
greatly reverenced. Other old churches make 
you stop to admire their noble towers, richly 
carved gateways, galleries with groups of pillars 
like an exchange, and traces of Moorish work. 
And then you halt again before the city gates, 
the mint, the curious and magnificent pile of the 
Alcazar, the deep-flowing Eresma, the time-mel- 
low^ed Casa de Segovia, — all forming a vast open 
air studio for an artist, filled already with bits 
that cannot be surpassed. And it is six hours' 
hard riding by diligence to reach this picture- 
land ! Would a railway diminish or increase its 
charms ? Suppose you were in a reverie, looking 
on the Alcazar and thinking how in the olden 
time a court lady (doubtless in a reverie too) let 
the Infante Don Pedro slip out of her arms into 
the Eresma below and had her head cut off for 
25 



386 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

the slip, — all quaintly memorialized on a slab in 
the chapel of the Alcazar, where the royal baby 
is represented holding a sword : suppose, I say, 
you were in such a reverie communing with the 
thousand memoried Past : would not the scream 
of the railway engine be rather discordant ? 
And then the other legend which is connected 
with the old pile about the naturalized Dutch 
Spaniard, Duke of Rippero, a favorite of Philip 
V. : how he lost favor with the king, was im- 
prisoned here in the Alcazar, escaped, became 
a Protestant, then a Mussulman, then a Pasha 
and general-in-chief to the Emperor of Morocco, 
and then died a pauper in a hovel of Tangier, — 
how would such a legend look by the lurid glare 
of the engine lantern ? Or could you ever read 
Gi^ Bias again, who was confined in one of its 
prisons ? No doubt much of the poetry, and 
many of the pictures of the place, would steal 
away, and a prosaic, hollow-hearted old town, full 
of grasping hotel-keepers, French bonnes, choco- 
late, and pale ale would be the result. 



XX. 

* Now give us lands where olives grow/ 

Crie'd the North to the South, 

* Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow 
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard row ! ' 

Cried the North to the South. 

E. B. Browning. 

The ride from Madrid to Salamanca is through 
the same stony desert with which a traveler in 
Spain soon becomes so familiar. At the Escorial 
the Guadarrania begins to throw out grand granite 
crags, and the country loses to some extent the 
repulsive yellowness and barrenness which signal- 
ize the neighborhood of the capital. The only 
place of interest passed between Madrid and 
Salamanca is Avila, a small, ancient town con- 
taining a few churches of interest and especially 
the tomb of Don Juan, the only son of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, who is buried in a church outside 
the town. At Medina "del Campo trains are 
changed, and at five in the morning the train for 
Salamanca taken. Six hours of miserable wait- 
ing in the station, surrounded by filthy peasants 
of every province, with continual hubbub, singing 
and drinking, were an ill preparation for the 



388 SPAIN IN PJWFIIE, 



^ 



glories of Salamanca. It is one of the rare in- 
stances in which I have had to wait for a train in 
Spain. Never punctual, the trains nearly always 
connect more or less directly with each other; 
there are few branch lines — empahnes in Spanish ; 
- — the railroads adhere to the general direction of 
the ancient turnpikes and show the correct in- 
stinct which guided the Spanish forefathers in 
selecting the most practicable routes. These 
pikes are magnificent highways and run from one 
end of the kingdom to the other. They are all 
macadamized and furnished with granite league 
and mile posts, showing the distances and direc- 
tions. Posadas (reposing places) and ventas dot 
the roadside as it winds over the Jnountains, and 
trains of sumpter-mules and arrieros give a little 
animation to the otherwise dismally solitary scene. 
The Romans had already established excellent 
highways, one of which led to Rome by way of 
Seville, Leon, and the South of France. The 
Goths and Moors established others, which were 
multiplied by the Catholic kings, and are now 
consummated by a system of railways fast cover- 
ing the entire kingdom. Spain does not abound 
in small towns ; hence these roads run from city 
to city and link the more populous neighborhoods 
together at a very great expense. There seems 
to be no country life ; there are no grove-embow- 
ered chateaux ; it is a pilgrimage from one large 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 389 

town to another, without intervening links. From 
the length of the roads and the slowness of the 
speed, traveling, especially in summer, is a great 
hardship ; one suffers greatly from thirst, hunger, 
and weariness, in spite of the agiiadoras or water- 
women, who infest the stations with their jugs of 
oily water, and the fondas where an infinity of 
scraps is served for breakfast and dinner. First- 
class traveling is alone tolerable, and were it not 
for the dust, the spacious compartments, holding 
fBom eight to ten persons and designed for passen- 
gers of this description, would be very comfort- 
able. Owing to the lack of comforts on the road, 
Spaniards travel with the oddest medley of hand- 
luggage, always including bottles of water, melons, 
fruit, wine, lunch-baskets, and a multitude of va- 
lises. The carpet-bags and trunks are curiously 
old-fashioned and such as people elsewhere would 
be ashamed to use. The people are hospitable, 
and always offer one whatever they may be eat- 
ing among themselves. Smoke, smoke, smoke, 
everywhere, without parley and without objection ; 
there are no compartments reserved for non- 
smokers. The trains are all dilatory, and the 
so-called express to Medina as much so as almost 
any. 

At eight we arrived at — a plain. I looked 
about for Salamanca, and it was some time be- 
fore I discovered in the distance a cluster of 



390 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

towers, hardly distinguishable, in their yellow- 
ish coloring, from the level around. Spanish 
railways have a stupid habit of stopping at some 
distance from the towns they pass, which ne- 
cessitates a very inconvenient transfer to a se- 
ries of filthy omnibuses, which, with their clam- 
orous porters, clutch up the bewildered traveler 
and convey him at a gallop to the town. This is 
the case at Pampeluna, Saragossa, Alicante, Gra- 
nada, Valladolid, Burgos, and Salamanca. Per- 
haps the expectation is that the town will develop 
and grow out towards the stations — which, in 
the case of Salamanca, has certainly not been 
the case. The air was singularly fresh and pure, 
and the drive pleasant, despite the excessively 
rough driving. The omnibus drove round the 
fine plaza, and finally drew up — nowhere particu- 
larly, leaving its occupants to go whither they 
would, in my case to the Fonda de la Rosa., which 
stood written in large letters at the back of the 
omnibus. I looked round in vain for the Fonda ; 
it was nowhere to be seen ; but with the aid of a 
porter I threaded my way through the arcades of 
the square into a long narrow alley, then through 
a sort of stable-yard up to my apartment in the 
hotel. The place was infamously dirty ; insects 
swarmed ; my windows looked picturesquely on a 
court-yard, where three black pigs were grunting 
and discoursing over heaps of garbage, occasion- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 39 1 

ally varying their entertainment by coming up- 
stairs and threatening to invade my sanctuary. 
A chambermaid, in astonishingly short petticoats, 
pumps, braided hair, high Spanish comb, and 
brilliant colors, tripped in fantastically, inquired 
about my wants, and then disappeared, to be fol- 
lowed by a sort of stable-boy with a cup of tea 
and no milk. I pitied the Bachelor of Sala- 
manca of the good old times, when even these 
things — insects and all — would have been lux- 
uries ; and went stoically to work to arrange my 
toilette. 

This is the principal inn of the place, whence 
the diligences depart, and where railway tickets 
are sold. 

Salamanca itself, however, amply makes up for 
the shortcomings of its inns. The glimpse of 
beautiful towers and clustering churches, illumi- 
nated by the soft rays of the rising sun, which I 
got at the station, realized itself in a series of 
most interesting architectural monuments. Sala- 
manca was the seat of a famous university, which 
came even before Bologna and Oxford, and 
ranked next after Paris ; at a time, too, when uni- 
versity architecture was ecclesiastical, and the 
Gothic in the ascendant. Hence the large num- 
ber of houses, convents, and churches which, in 
their elaborately decorated fagades and doors, re- 
call the bygone glories of the place, and bring be- 



392 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

fore us the ten thousand students that thronged 
these streets, the mighty prelates, abbots, and 
scholars that lived and reigned here ; the great 
navigators that visited it and argued with its 
learned professors j and the busy life, half con- 
ventual, half scholastic, that filled every crevice 
of its monastic and literary establishments. There 
is a magnificent plaza, surrounded by nearly a 
hundred pillars, in the centre of the town. A se- 
ries of marble medallions, containing portraits of 
great citizens, all with their names duly turned 
into Latin, runs around the plaza, which has now 
become a charming garden, with a fountain in the 
centre, though bull-fights used to take place in 
it, and twenty thousand spectators looked down 
from the roofs and balconies on the scene. Un- 
der the arcades, all the trades in Christendom 
nest in miniature ; the shops are delightfully old- 
fashioned, with such backwardness and benight- 
edness in their very aspect as would provoke the 
irony of a Parisian boutiquier. One is delighted 
to see advertisements of circulating libraries put 
up here and there, whereby the ancient reputa- 
tion of the place as a great literary centre is kept 
alive, and the illusion of the intellectual pre- 
served, amid what looks very like withering 
squalor. The good people of Salamanca prom- 
enade up and down these arcades in the cool of 
the evening, and nothing is wanting save the rich 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 393 

costumes of the fifteenth century to make the 
place look exactly as it did when Columbus held 
his famous dispute with the doctors of the uni- 
versity. The arcades were not in existence then, 
but you see many a time-stained house which was ; 
and a very little imagination is needed to recall 
the pictorial groups, the transcendent discoveries, 
and the world-wide interests of those times. 

A few steps from the plaza bring you to the 
church and convent of the Jesuits, now an insti- 
tution for the education of Irish priests, founded 
originally by Philip II. The interior of the 
church is like that of nearly every other Jesuit 
church, — a mass of gilt, whitewash, sign-paint- 
ers' crucifixions, and revolting images, — a Bar- 
tholomew's Fair of idiotic sculpture and wooden 
statuary. One hastens from it as from an archi- 
tectural debauch, and suddenly a wonderful por- 
tal stands before one, looking for all the world 
like a piece of rich old yellow Venetian point, 
petrified, and thrown over the wall, — the fagade 
of the university. It is a glorious piece of plate- 
work, not chiseled silver, but dainty and de- 
tailed and multitudinous in its fancies, as the 
work of a December frost on the pane. Oppo- 
site stands the meditative figure of Fra Luis de 
Leon, the poet, standing in bronze on a white 
marble pedestal. To the right run the elegant 
cloisters surmounted by an exquisite cornice rep- 



394 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

resenting birds, animals, and all the dim religious 
light of monkish fancy carved in the open day- 
light. It is quite a wonder of fantastic skill. 

Farther on, after threading one narrow street aft- 
er another, the fine old Gothic cathedral spreads 
its nearly two hundred feet of length and breadth 
before you, with one of the finest portals in the 
world, — simply a masterpiece of minute carving, 
in which the mellow-tinted stone is as sensitive 
as water, and has taken a myriad of impressions 
from the bounteous hand and brain of the work- 
man. Within all is serene, lofty Gothic : pillars 
like organ-reeds, which break on the roof into 
sheaves of curves and pillarets light as air ; colors 
in the glass which rival the richest silk, groined 
recesses, with portraits projecting from circular 
gold frames, gilded organs and canopies, a choir 
full of rarely elaborate stalls, wherein the canons 
were sitting as we entered, and chanting mass, 
while veiled Oriental-looking women knelt and 
worshiped at pictured altars. Adjoining is the 
old cathedral said to have been built by the Cid's 
confessor, Fra Geronimo. The ascent of the 
tower is well worth making, provided — as is 
nearly always the case in Catholic countries — 
the sexton is not ringing the bells, as the view" 
over the town and suburbs is admirable. The 
river Tormes, celebrated in song and story, is 
seen lazily twining about the town and running in 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 395 

under the old Roman bridge, watering the huertas 
of the city, and making them one vivid spot of 
verdure in the encircling dun. Beneath is the 
Arzobispo with its delicate portico, the work of 
Archbishop Fonseca ; the courts and cloisters of 
the university \ the spires and belfries of the 
parish churches ; the Gobierno, and the barracks ; 
a heaped, tumultuous coiip d^xil such as Asmo- 
deus might take pleasure in, all eery and ideal- 
ized from this great height, and bathed in such 
Olympian light as only Greeks and Spaniards 
know. Off in another obscure nook of the town 
is the convent of Santo Domingo, glorying in 
just such another portal as is seen in the uni- 
versity and cathedral, — the dream of some poet 
and genius, who laid his head upon the stone 
and dreamt this dream of angels for our delight. 
The cloister adjacent is the town museum. What 
do we not owe to the sculptor-poets who have 
bequeathed us these marble pages so magically 
illuminated by their gentle geniuses ? One after 
another we turn them over : not one is like an- 
other or ever will be, any more than two human 
minds can be alike ; each one has the imprint of 
its own author, different from any other ; they are 
as variously rich as a page of Tasso or Tenny- 
son, and their authors, after dreaming and poetiz- 
ing these lovely visions into existence, have gone 
to sleep again and left them to us as a gentle 



396 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

benefaction ! Breathe tenderly on them, Rain 
and Sunlight and summer Air ; these precious 
pages are humanity's and ours : inalienable pos- 
sessions, not to be given or granted away by any 
law under heaven, but bequeathed to us by the 
hand and spirit of Unknown Genius. 

Salamanca has an old donjon keep, with a 
tower and buttresses which form a perfect pict- 
ure, the Torre del Clavel j then an old house 
called Casa de las Conchas, which is covered all 
over the outside with large carven shells. The 
streets and street corners abound in character- 
istics of just the sort to transfer to a gallery, and 
one is constantly reminded that Spain must be 
visited, not for its present., but for its/^^i*/, when 
it opens its antique volumes generously and dis- 
plays such treasures as no other country has to 
offer. Remembering this, a light and easy bridge 
is thrown over the otherwise impassable gulf of 
its dirt, its indolence, its love of tradition, and 
its indifference to improvement. It is the land 
of pomp, punctilio, and all the /'s in the primer. 
Nobody advances, — except the women ; progress 
of a weak, imitative kind begins to percolate in 
through the Pyrenees ; but the general tone of 
the life is monotonous continuity, sameness, and 
stagnancy. Enchanted stillness reigns as if the 
land lay under the tree Yggdrasill. The men 
smoke cigarettes from morning till night, and 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 397 

the women, — well, they fan. Who reads ? I 
have often asked myself this question since I 
have been in Spain. I did not see a bookstore 
in Segovia or Salamanca. At Madrid they are 
numerous, but so is the foreign population. The 
shop windows, where there are books at all, are 
full of obscene publications ; a few illustrated 
papers are sold in Madrid, but I do not remem- 
ber seeing a single magazine or literary paper 
pure and simple. The people are passionately 
fond of oratory, and have always excelled in it. 
Was not Quintilian a Spaniard ? But alas, where 
are the wit of Martial, the poetry of Lucan, the 
philosophy of Seneca ? Four of the Roman em- 
perors, Hadrian, Trajan, Theodosius, and Hono- 
rius, were Spaniards, but not one of them was 
perhaps of specially great intellectual force. 
The doctors of Salamanca were celebrated for 
their erudition, but what has become of it } The 
university is now a fifth-rate college, and learning 
languishes. It is, however, an encouraging sign 
to see through the towns Gratuita Instriiccmi 
Fublica, Instruccion Nacional^ and other cheering 
evidences of awakened intellectuality set up over 
large buildings, designed for the education of the 
people. Shops where saints' legends and lives 
of the Virgin are sold are not so numerous as 
might be feared in Catholic Spain, always re- 
nowned for this special wealth. Image-worship, 



398 SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 

however, flourishes to a fearful extent, and di- 
vine honors are paid martyrs and martyresses as 
copiously as of yore. A curious relic of super- 
stition is the practice Spanish women have of 
making the sign of the cross before the starting 
of a train. Another is the passion for naming 
children, not after the Virgin herself, but after 
some one of her numerous appellations, Dolores 
(pangs), Mercedes (thanks), Nueves (snows), and 
so on, which signifies that the children are under 
the protection of that special form of the multi- 
form. Protean, and multitudinous Mary. The 
late queen was, therefore. Dona Maria Mercedes 
de Borbon ; Mary Thank-you Bourbon ; how 
suggestive of Dr.-If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for- 
thee-thou-hadst-been-damned-Barebones, euphoni- 
ously called Dr. Damned Barebones, for short ! 

Valladolid should not be connected in the 
same paragraphs with Salamanca. It is a squalid 
old Castilian city, once the capital of Spain, till 
the lugubrious Philip mortified its flesh by remov- 
ing the capital to Madrid. It has this same look 
of intense mortification to-day, as if it had never 
recovered from its humiliation, but lay in ashes 
and filth ever since. After the grace of Andalu- 
sia, the cheerfulness of Madrid and the fertility 
of Valencia, Valladolid's gaunt and sinewy thin- 
ness makes an unpleasant impression. Be it the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 399 

wretched inn (del Siglo), the nasty 7nesa redonda, 
or the midnight arrival in a strange place, the 
city contrasted unfavorably with others. A long 
walk up and down its streets hardly removed 
the impression, in spite of the intense pictur- 
esqueness of the great square, and the pleasant 
shady promenades along the Douro, here as full 
of water as at Oporto, where it empties (would it 
were Valladolid !) into the sea. The psychology 
of impressions of travel is a curious thing. A 
train ten minutes behind time can de-apotheosize 
an ideal and take all the poetic atmosphere, that 
has been waiting for you for a thousand years, 
out of a place, leaving nothing but its utter shell 
behind. The evil glitter of summer on intermi- 
nable yellow downs brings the imagination to a 
point of exhaustion, whence nothing can recover 
it. The slime of a yellow river may coat the 
fancy with its mucus till there is no distinguish- 
ing between beauty and the beast. Even Hesiod 
and the Egyptian calendar-makers knew that 
times and seasons exert a talismanic potency ; 
even a glass of water in the furnaces of the 
Spanish hills may give back to one a recovered 
sense of life, and make the vistas and gardens 
of the soul light up and flash afar with eloquent 
activity. 

Valladolid perhaps was seen in an unfortunate 
hour, when evil planets were in the ascendant 



400 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

and inauspicious influences abroad, for it failed 
to bring the fountains of interest into play. A 
languid glance is cast at the house where Philip 
II. came into the world ; another at the palace 
which saw the marriage of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella ; the house where Columbus breathed his 
last is conscientiously searched out and the house 
once occupied by Cervantes, too ; but your tan- 
gled feet soon refuse to wade through this thick 
golden sunshine and tattered city ; a homeward 
instinct seizes them, and before you know it, you 
are at the hotel breathing the odors of the ap- j 
proaching olla and wondering whether the slat- 1 
terns, male and female, will ever get themselves \ 
ready for dinner. The very flies weary waiting for 
them, and depart out of the dining-room window 
like winged mendicants bound for some more hos- 
pitable refectory. It would be a great gain if the 
Spaniards could take to heart the following max- 
ims of Brillat Savarin : ' The destiny of nations 
depends on the way in which they nourish them- 
selves.' ^ Tell me what you eat, and I will tell 
you what you are.' * The discovery of a new dish 
does more for the happiness of the human race 
than the discovery of a new constellation.' Add 
to w^hich Emerson's saying that the ^ kitchen- 
clock is more convenient than sidereal time ; ' 
and apply to the Spanish cooks the rule which 
Lowell says used to be applied to children, that 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 4OI 

* they were annually whipped at the boundaries 
of the parish, on general principles ; ' — put, I say, 
these maxims and practices in operation and more 
good would be done to Spain than perhaps by 
the Code Napoleon. 

The cathedral is a granite scarecrow, unfinished 
(as I hope it ever will be), a fright conceived and 
borne in iniquity by Herrera, who was called to 
the Escorial before his plans could be accom- 
plished. It is covered with a hair-like grass and 
looks old and weather-beaten. I cannot con- 
ceive a drearier-looking pile, pseudo-classical in 
style, so and so many feet long and broad, and 
on the whole heroically homely. Why did Her- 
rera wish us to expiate his sins by looking at 
it ? Not even the sheeny satin of Castilian air 
can glorify it into anything beyond a crude 
abomination, conceived and borne in ugliness, 
a blemish on the pure clime in which it finds 
itself. All the sins of the cathedral, however, 
receive plenary indulgence when your idle feet 
bring you accidentally before the front of San 
Pablo, and the cornice and patio of San Grego- 
rio adjacent. The same miraculously delicate 
carving which we see on the front of the Uni- 
versity of Salamanca, blossoms here into a 
thousand thread-like Puck-on-Pegasus moldings : 
stars, shields, arabesques, canopies, pinnacles as 
exquisitely chiseled as a silversmith's master- 
26 



402 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

piece, succeed each other in tiers, till the whole 
is like a cashmere shawl in subtilty and fine- 
ness. It is more an efflorescence than a piece 
of handiwork : a quaint and airy melody wrought 
in stone, giving strange delectation to passing pil- 
grims, who hear it with a finer ear than the out- 
ward one. A dreamlet, passing through Puck's 
brain as he lay asleep in an asphodel, has been 
caught by some great magician and flashed upon 
us in this charming work. The cornice of San 
Gregorio is beautiful, formed of all sorts of ani- 
mals intertwined and apparently engaged in a 
wild dance along the battlements. Within are 
a very elegant gallery and patio,, with twisted pil- 
lars, Moorish ajimez windows, and a fine staircase 
and roof which admit meditative feet to an an- 
tique and antic world, where poetry and religion 
joined hands in loving rivalry and called into be- 
ing this half rhythmical structure. 

Valladolid, too, once had a famous university, 
and many royal palaces ; libraries, theatres, and 
promenades are not wanting even to-day ; and 
some of the squares and streets have here and 
there bits of canonized antiquity well worth visit- 
ing. The Plaza Mayor was a great jousting 
place, where jousts and tournaments alternated 
with gay entertainments, in which Lutherans 
were roasted. Its arcades, shops, and tiered bal- 
conies, with the rivulet-like streets debouching 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 403 

into the square, have witnessed many a scene of 
Castilian pageantry. I could not but think of 
the sad, silent face of Columbus amid all the 
throng of costumes and hidalgos brilliant with 
silk and satin — the sad, beautiful face which 
with all its force had something of saintliness 
in it, like Tasso's. In a few moments the plaza 
was transformed into the tableau which he saw, 
and not a stone of it was changed, — gliding 
sefioras, Castilian lazzaroni, dark Spanish figures 
and faces, needed but the marvelous trick of 
moonlight to present a scene as poetic and pag- 
eant-like as any Veronese has painted for sleepy 
Venice. These arcaded streets then became in 
reverie an illuminated hall, with a thousand pil- 
lars ; lights burned everywhere ; and the sound of 
guitars rose plaintively to the moon. One could 
hear the pathetic romances of life and death re- 
hearsed ! sublime dreams of half-witted naviga- 
tors peopled the shadows with their plenteous 
phantoms ; and the lords and ladies of Velazquez 
stepped from their canvases and engaged in 
stately promenade through the eery square. 
With such illusions the history of Spain becomes 
a beautiful romance ; noble discoverers and cap- 
tains, painters and poets, princes and monks, 
form a rich procession before the mind's eye and 
leave not the heart untouched. The quiet beauty 
of a Spanish night and an old Spanish square 



404 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

have done it all ; we become reconciled to the 
savagery of Alva, the sternness of the Gran Capi- 
tan, the bigotry of Ximenes, and the laxity of the 
Bourbons ; but the sole illustrious figure is Co- 
lumbus, the hero of this moonlit resurrection, sad 
and silent, full of dreams, full of events, by in- 
stinct greater than all the doctors of the church, 
by deeds childlike, trusting, transcendent. 

VALLADOLID. 

My heart was happy when I turned from Burgos to Valla- 

dolid ; 
My heart that day was light and gay — it bounded like a 

kid. 
I met a palmer on the way, — my horse he bade me rein : 

* I left Valladolid to-day, — I bring thee news of pain ; — 
The lady-love whom thou dost seek in gladness and in 

cheer, 
Closed is her eye, and cold her cheek ; I saw her on her 
bier. 

* The priests went singing of the mass, — my voice their 

song did aid ; 
A hundred knights with them did pass to the burial of the 

maid ; 
And damsels fair went weeping there, and many a one did 

say, 

* Poor cavalier ! he is not here, — 't is well he 's far away.' 
I fell when thus I heard him speak — upon the dust Tlay ; 
I thought my heart would surely break, — I wept for half a 

day. 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 40S 

When evening came I rose again, the palmer held my 

steed ; 
And swiftly rode I o'er the plain to dark Valladolid. 
I came unto the sepulchre where they my love had laid, — 
I bowed me down beside the bier, and there my moan I 

made : 

* Oh take me, take me to thy bed, I fain would sleep with 

thee! 
My love is dead, my hope is fled, — there is no joy for me.' 

I heard a sweet voice from the tomb, — I heard her voice 
so clear : 

* Rise up, rise up, my knightly love ! thy weeping well I 

hear ; 
Rise up and leave this darksome place, — it is no place for 

thee. 
God yet will send thee helpful grace in love and chivalry ; 
Though in the grave my bed I have, — for thee my heart is 

sore : 
'T will ease my heart if thou depart, — thy peace may God 

restore ! ' 

LOCKHART. 



XXI. 

As Brahma walked over the earth the gold revealed itself to him say- 
ing, ' Here am I, Lord, do with me what thou wilt ! ' — Lowell. 

Have you ever turned over an ancient volume 
(say) printed by Wynken de Worde, or even ear- 
lier, a monkish manuscript where the vellum has 
bloomed into an edging of illuminated fruits and 
flowers ; where there are mighty pictures cover- 
ing a whole page -, where there are quaint mar- 
gins and curious vignettes but half-emerged from 
an old black-letter imagination ; where there is a 
trick and tune of ancient felicities which no lat- 
ter-day printer has ever learned or ever inter- 
woven with the bald Roman script ? The queen 
of Navarre's missal-book, or one of the lovely 
' hour-books ' with the arms of the Plantagenets, 
would give you glimpses into these irrecoverable 
times. 

Just so it is with Burgos. After the pilgrimage 
over the Spanish sierras in search of a * summer 
in Spain,' there is positive refreshment in reach- 
ing this last station of the Cross. Not only is 
Burgos but a few hours from yesterday's * Gaul- 
ois ; ' not only is there a glimpse here and there 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 407 

of French cleanliness ; not only are there avenues 
of pollard poplars, chestnuts, and walnuts par- 
ticularly suggestive of the tri-color and the ^ tras 
monies ; ' but Burgos is in itself poetically satis- 
factory. There is a purity, a repose, a quaint- 
ness, an ancientness about the former capital of 
Castile which, added to its rare air, its tortuous 
river, its umbrageous environs, and its venerable 
associations, combine into one of the most per- 
fect mediaeval compositions left us by the great 
artist Time. 

Many hours of weariness were spent at the Sal- 
amanca Junction waiting for the great northern 
mail train from Madrid, which maintains a fee- 
ble communication between that city and Paris. 
It was early September ; the air seemed as rare 
and tense as if we were on a mountain-top ; the 
great thin plains lifted their flanks to the yellow 
moon with a gleam like that of snow; a wind 
sharp as the edges of Toledo blades tempered 
with nitric acid stung one's cheeks in the impa- 
tient promenade up and down the station ; the 
shut glass doors of the waiting-rooms were glazed 
with white breath from within, where a medley of 
individuals had gathered and spread themselves 
over the floors and benches, expectant like our- 
selves of the Ethelred-the-Unready train. Laugh- 
ter, ribaldry, dram-drinking, joke-telling, songs, 
dialogues, politics, babies, — what a night ! It 



408 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

seemed there was to be a bull-fight at Avila, I 
think ; hence this caravansary of camping women, 
puling infants, dancing peasants, and village pol- 
iticians. You felt sure they would have dozed 
there till doomsday, perhaps, for just one peep 
into the enchanted arena ; and the thin air might 
have grown thinner, the wind might have sun- 
dered soul and spirit, and the Castilian nose and 
toes might have become as blue as the bluest 
blood in the peninsula. This hot, alcoholic blood 
of Spain does not seem to mind cold or incon- 
venience ; it has its own unnatural warmth ; and 
you see its sullen fires in what Calderon prettily 
calls ''las voces de los ojos^^ — the voices of the 
eyes. It was enough to put one in a ' marvelous 
dump and sadness,' as an old English writer has 
it, to wander among these sleeping bull-fighters, 
and feel the incisive air hour after hour mak- 
ing inroads into one's constitution. Finally, ^ la 
journee est dure, mats elk — finira I ' — the train 
came, and we got in with a feeling of snugness, 
and made ourselves a nest among the comforta- 
ble cushions. Nobody, unless he is like Cole- 
ridge's cherub — nothing but wings and head — 
should think of traveling in any other way than 
first-class in Spain. Spaniards have a super- 
stitious dread of foreigners, so you are often 
left delightfully to yourself, in what is decidedly 
the roomiest of European carriages ; the second- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 4O9 

class, being all thrown together in one large com- 
partment holding forty-eight persons, is a sort of 
Smithfielcl market — * seventy-five acres of meat ' 
in miniature ; while the third-class is too un- 
clean to mention. No matter where you are, you 
are offered something to eat. If it be in the 
third-class, you become the martyr of hospitality, 
for wonderful are the objects presented for your 
reluctant acceptance. If it be the second-class, 
it is a shade more decent and dainty : huge bas- 
kets are brought out ; wine and water are offered ; 
Bologna sausages, like a small obelisk of Luxor, 
are dissected and handed round, and if the com- 
pany be congenial, cheerfulness reigns supreme. 
In the first-class old Spanish etiquette prevails ; 
offers are made, but declined courteously, and with 
due ceremony. 

' Que necios cumplimientos, 
Que frases repetidas ! ' 

A Spaniard seldom insists — possibly from the 
scantiness of the supply — and among them, at 
least, one can never imagine a Great Fire breaking 
out in Pudding Lane and ending in Pie Corner ! 
Between Medina (the Junction) and Burgos, 
however, we were fortunately spared the travel- 
ing picnic; everybody was asleep. * Then they 
bound him to the stake and set fire to that most 
constant martyr : ' so one feels in the Spanish 
cars. There is nothing to do but to endure. 



4IO SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Eventually they come to something ; and, though 
it is seldom your station or your stopping-place, 
still there is a sort of abstract pleasure in seeing 
other people gratified ; in hearing omnibuses rat- 
tling off with belated passengers ; and in watching 
the surprise of the station-people that one should 
have arrived at all. 

Late, late, we got to Burgos, the city of the 
Cid, of legendary Spain, of the Goths, Castilians, 
and Pedro the Cruel, of the people who describe 
themselves gayly as descendants of Noah's grand- 
children, who manufacture cheese, paper, and 
cloth, who are the most unprogressive people in 
Spain, and who delight in ancient recollections. 
The deep breadth and beauty of the night, the 
cloudless darkness, stillness, and serenity, the 
silent old Gotho-Castilian city, plunged in sleep, 
the sense of immensely wide, spacious streets 
traversed but unseen, the long flicker of innu- 
merable lamps filling the ashen darkness, and 
bringing out architectural forms with strange and 
exaggerated vastness ; the very crackle of the 
frosty air, the very lateness and lonesomeness 
of the place and hour; — all made a weird and 
solemn impression on the imagination : 

* Looking upward at the heavenes beams 
With nightes stars thick powderM everywhere.' 

A step from the train to the ancient omnibus had 
flung open the valves and admitted us to the 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 4 1 1 

moldy presence of Yesterday ! You felt that 
there was a river meandering through this dark- 
ness, that there were bridges, monuments, gates ; 
that the darkness was populous with figures as 
any background of Rembrandt ; but all had van- 
ished into the large tranquil night ; whatever was 
harsh was now softened and harmonious ; what- 
ever was squalid and impure had melted away 
under the purple plenitude of the darkened 
heavens. A sharp turn and a swift drive brought 
us to the door of the inn ; sleepy female waiters 
escorted us to our rooms ; everything looked as 
old as the inn from which the Canterbury Pil- 
grims started on their journey ; an ancient and 
musty smell, more befitting the crypt of an old 
Norman cathedral, greeted us as we ascended 
flight after flight of stairs up to the top of the 
hostelry ; and the very mirror seemed to give 
back a face of the fifteenth century. 

My first impulse was to open the windows, 
which had been sealed and cemented obviously 
from the time of the Cid : a dainty balcony ! 

How beautiful and still it was, looking down 
into the deep street or over at the trellised win- 
dows, or up and on till a cluster of exquisite 
spires fretted the sky to the east, and hung faint 
and spectre-like among the stars-, — Burgos Cathe- 
dral ! I have never seen a lovelier group of pin- 
nacles. And they pricked the darkness and 



412 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

yearned heavenward with an ahnost human in 
tensity ; the faint, uncertain starlight played hide- 
and-seek among them ; they took on an unnatural 
largeness and grandeur, and the gigantic church, 
lightened and lengthened by the illusions of the 
hour, seemed to stand a-tiptoe over the town, and 
to be a thing of glory and buoyance such as no 
other cathedral ever could be. 

Again and again under the jasmine yellow of 
the Spanish sun I returned to gaze on the picture 
of these pinnacles : the ancient doorways of the 
cathedral, the Gate of Pardon, the pointed arches, 
the trefoils and rose-windows, the clustered pil- 
larets, statues, and compartments of the fagade, 
the open-work balustrades, the monograms of 
Christ and the Virgin here and there, the trans- 
parent delicacy and warmth of color of the two 
towers, three hundred feet high, the lovely con- 
centric arches of the Gate of the Apostles fantas- 
tically peopled with statuettes and efBgies ; the 
Gate of Pilgrimage, looking like a piece of Tif- 
fany's silverwork transferred to stone, with its 
beautiful detail in a thousand minute moldings, 
crowned by a cornice and scutcheon of the good 
bishop who paid for it ; and the Archbishop's 
Gate, crowded with cherubs and seraphs playing 
musical instruments, and ending in the glorious 
blaze of a rose-window, wherein the dying fires of 
fifteenth century sunsets have been relighted and 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 4 1 3 

made to shed again their poetry and their efful- 
gence over this great cathedral. It is difficult to 
say in what light such a wonder of Gothic art is 
best seen. The beauty of the clear Ontoria stone 
of which it is built catches the noon glamour won- 
derfully and fills with an exceeding richness as the 
shadows creep over the meridian. But it is the 
very poetry of dying light to see the sun fading 
among the pinnacles, throwing one into vivid dis- 
tinctness, and another into inky shadow, throwing 
all its pallors and purities full on the embattled 
corona of the great lantern tower, or, while the 
west is one mighty fan-tracery, playing its battery 
of irradiation in among the steepled thicket of 
the congregated roof. I confess, too, to a feeling 
of deep poetry in the starlit pinnacles as they 
clustered close to the stars and filled the sky with 
their delicate lances. 

Externally, Burgos Cathedral is the most strik- 
ing in Spain, and inside it is hard to surpass. 
While many an English church has exceeded it 
in mere proportions, — it is three hundred feet 
long by two hundred and thirteen feet wide, — 
its rich and lofty interior is unexcelled anywhere 
in the world. It seems to have been the work 
more of the statuary than of the architect : it is 
a Shakspere among cathedrals in its infinite vari- 
ety of carvings, in the elegance and quaintness of 
the riotous imagination that has presided over its 



414 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

decoration, in the sculptured whim and carven 
paradox in which it abounds, in the cadenced 
harmony of its proportions, and in the serene 
rigor of its virgin ally white spaces. It is so pure, 
so still, so severe, so white inside j there is a lus- 
trous pavement of white Carrara marble, given 
by the Queen of Spain ; the light is white, the 
three naves are white, the twenty octagonal pil- 
lars which separate these naves attain an airy 
elegance, lightness, and whiteness as they dash 
their pillared snow against the roof ; there is a 
presence of white roses in these pure disembod- 
ied spaces, filled with the perfumes of many cent- 
uries ; one feels as if the shed rose-leaves of all 
the Lamarques in the world were about, Roman 
fashion, to rain down upon one in a startled 
mist. The spectator, as he stands in the centre 
of the cathedral and looks up, feels as if spirits 
were descending, and bringing with them the star- 
shaped dome which rests over the intersections of 
the naves, — so delicate, so ethereally light and 
fair it is. Down from it, too, there seems to pour 
a torrent of seraphs, apostles, prophets, fruits, 
flowers, shells, busts, waving banners, scutcheons, 
and marble allegories, in the shape of four enor- 
mous tower-like piers literally smothered in these 
chiseled details, supporting the dome. There is 
an ambience, a tenderness, a spaciousness, a 
sweetness in this pure-stoned cathedral such as 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 415 

I do not remember to have seen anywhere else 
in Europe. It is nearly two hundred feet from 
roof to floor; there is a singular luxuriance of 
tracery and carving ; the great pillars rise out of 
a tumult of chisel-work, and mount with noble 
wings to the roof ; all is stainless and great. 
Ducats without number were spent on the elabo- 
rate high altar, with its tombs, screens, and rilie- 
vos. All the Dark Ages, one thinks, wreathe over 
the one hundred and three walnut stalls of the 
choir, with their pilasters, medallions, and cano- 
pies, a choir which is one of the most exquisite 
books of illustrations ever made of that minor 
but inimitable talent which delights to make a 
story of a chairback, carve a legend on a foot- 
stool, or write a poem with a chisel round the 
frame of a miserere. While all is large, grand- 
iose, lofty around, here all is small, delicious, 
prankish, as if the dainty spirits of the corridor 
in Faust had turned illustrators, and had stung 
the dead walnut into sprite-like life. Art-journals 
could, no doubt, be filled with the grotesqueries 
of these stalls and their tiers ; there is nothing 
so good, even in Reineke Fuchs, as some of the 
satirical scenes in the choirs and misereres of 
these old Spanish cathedrals ; one sees that 
they were the fairy-tale, the Arabian Nights, the 
Mother Goose's Melodies of that age of pleas- 
ant imaginations and child-like faith ; they hu- 



41 6 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

manize the old monks to us, and make us like 
to imagine them sitting amid these marvelous 
scenes, or mayhap kneeling on a miserere con- 
taining a carving of St. Atendio riding the devil ! 
As the organs are not even two hundred years 
old, it is hardly worth while mentioning them. 
Thousands of ducats were spent on the reredos 
the filigree doors, the altar-pieces, and the col- 
umns of this choir. The armorial boots and 
shoes of a famous cardinal may, quaintly enough, 
be seen here figured on an open-work reja which 
he presented to the cathedral. Under the ample 
wings of this cathedral fifteen chapels are gath- 
ered, besides its own glorious spaces of whiteness 
and calm : some speckled and piebald, with all 
imaginable horrors of late Spanish taste ; others, 
beautiful and rich with all that one might expect 
from Spanish romance. A peep into Santa Tec- 
la's chapel, magnificent as it is, is more like a 
peep into an oratory of Castile soap, — streaks, 
stripes, garish color, a whole rhetoric and rain- 
bow of shades and distinctions, meet the eye, and 
fever it with the glare. A step farther brings 
you to the chapel of Santa Ana, which is unin- 
teresting except to a garter king-at-arms or a Sir 
Bernard Burke, containing, as it does, a sculpt- 
ured genealogical tree of Christ. In it, how- 
ever, there is nothing like the refreshing geneal- 
ogies of Job given in the Talmud, some of which 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 417 

claim that he was contemporary with Moses, 
some that he married Abraham's daughter, and 
some that he never married or existed at all. 

Next in the cathedral journey comes a stair- 
case of thirty-eight steps, leading down — owing 
to the unevenness of the cathedral site — from 
the Puerta Alta to the church ; and close by a 
dainty bit of still life in the outstretched sweet- 
ness and purity of a group of children entrapped, 
as it were, in the arch over a sepulchral altar, 
marble immortalities, ascribed to the epic poet 
of tombs, Torrigiano. The pearl of the cathderal 
is, however, undoubtedly, the chapel of the Con- 
stable, Fernando de Velasco. From the tombs 
of jasper to the flooded jewelry of the fourteen 
painted windows, from the four-sided columns 
and balustraded pillars to the great door by 
which you enter from the cathedral, from the cor- 
nices and laurel-crowned children to the infinity 
of minutiae lavished on the arched semicircle and 
intricate niche-work above, from the stone scutch- 
eons to the embroidered gloves and cushions, 
armor, and lap-dog, near which repose the effi- 
gies of the Constable and his * very illustrious 
sefiora,' — all is one flow of poetry. A man who 
could call all this into being deserved to be five 
times viceroy of the realms. Lord High Consta- 
ble, and whatever else the most Catholic kings 
could make him, — last of all, to show that he was 
27 



41 8 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

a poet-laureate in virtue of this delightful cre- 
ation of the darker centuries. Children here 
support the cornices, as if they were born to it ; 
each statuette stands beneath the airiest marble 
canopy ; the whole thing swarms with pinnacles, 
clusters, figures, parables in stone, and has so 
wonderfully escaped the gray and ancient disas- 
ter of time that it looks as if its yesterday had 
hardly passed. 

The chapel of Santiago — the saint whom Fra 
Luis de Leon so charmingly commemorates in his 
Spanish ballad — is large enough to be the par- 
ish church, which purpose it serves to such of the 
good Burgolese as from, time to time wend their 
way thither. The martial patron of Spain — 
Santa Theresa is the padrona — is even seen 
astride a horse, riding in huge array over the 
high altar ; while the alabaster and jasper tombs, 
greatly scandalized at this performance, look on 
in silent contempt. The triumphant figure of the 
same cavalier is seen a-horseback over the jas- 
per-pedestaled railing, gayly disporting him amid 
the surrounding sanctities. Such an embodiment 
of life and health is welcome anywhere, and much 
more so amid the symbolic dust and frozen alle- 
gories of a mortuary chapel. Then the new sac- 
risty, with its garments and ecclesiastical fash- 
ions, and the chapel of San Enrique, come next 
on the list. In the chapel of San Juan de Saha- 



' SPAIN IN PROFILE. 419 

gan is a tomb of St. Lesmes, who is quaintly 
enough called ' Son of Burgos, Advocate of Kid- 
ney Complaint,' — not because, forsooth, he ad- 
vocated that complaint, but' because he had a 
miraculous gift of cure for it. It seems his own 
saintly carcase was tormented by the ^ dolor de 
rino7tes ;^ and with such exemplary patience and 
fortitude (Heaven bless him) did he bear the 
dolor, that it was awarded to him as a special 
honor to alleviate other people's. I am sure this 
is a far better reason for canonization than many 
a thousand of the other Catholic saints can urge. 
Of course there is the usual list of nodding vir- 
gins, venerated images, flounced and furbelowed 
beatitudes, and writhing martyrs ; no Spanish 
church can get along without them. The reli- 
quary of Burgos Cathedral is a small museum of 
desiccated saints. There is an image of Christ 
with real hair, beard, eyelashes, and thorns, that 
sweats on P>idays, and bleeds now and then for 
a change, — truly the * crucified phantom,' which 
it is called by a French writer. Horror and dis- 
gust are the sole emotions, in contemplating such 
things ; yet every Spanish church has more than 
one niche devoted to them. A dose of jalap 
could hardly be more effective in purging one's 
imagination. 

A vigorous push on what seems like a wall 
ajar admits you to the cloisters, where it is hard 



420 SPAIN IN PROFILE, • 

to tell what attracts you most, — the massive so- 
lidity of the whole structure, the pure ogival 
arches, the long vistas of arched and ambient 
gloom, the walls inlaid with abbots and canons, 
who rest around them in splendid tombs, the 
Moorish windows, the moldering mezzo-relievos, 
or the foliage, lancet-work^ and trefoils that break 
the continuity of lines, and lighten the ponderous 
masses of the stone. Like an Oxford quadran- 
gle, the cloisters enclasp a space dedicated to 
verdure and sunshine. Sunshine and verdure are 
the only things that never fade ; here the light 
lingers as in a deep well, and here its goldenness 
and summer joy have been stored from the time 
when old Geoffrey was tuning his lyre to the 
Duchess Blaunche, and John of Gaunt was get- 
ting him a new wife by marrying the poet's sister- 
in-law. Altogether charming is such a place ; 
suggestive, too, for beneath in the cr}^pt no end of 
scholars and warriors await the millennium, when 
they shall gather up their tangled limbs and 
personalities, and haste them to meet the Mas- 
ter. The whole place is a silent Benedicite and 
Blessed-are-ye : the lightest shoe treads historic 
dust and leaves a print in it. 

And to retire from this built-in niche of para- 
dise and mingle again with the tawdry world 
outside ; to forget these pinnacles, starlit or sun- 
lit, as the case may be, and go one's way back 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 421 

into a Spanish inn ; to turn from mitred abbots 
to mincing chambermaids, and from this rich aii 
of many centuries to the reek of a five o'clock 
dinner, — this is a part of Spain in summer ! 

Almost had I forgot the blessed Cid, on whom 
Burgos prides herself far more than on the ca- 
thedral ! Here he was born, and here he is 
buried, irreverently enough, to be sure, for his 
naked ashes are displayed in a glass case in quite 
as matter-of-fact a style as the jar of an apothe- 
cary labeled ^ Camomile.' I am sure the dough t}'' 
warrior has killed as many people since his death 
by their attempt to wade through his intermina- 
ble ^ rhymed chronicle ^ and ' romance,' as ever 
he did Moors and infidels in his valiant life-time. 
Whether one takes it in Herder's German or in 
scraps of Lockhart, Frere, and Longfellow, the 
ballad of Childe Rodrigo is a trial of patience. 
And one's recollections of him immediately mount 
on stilts in the alexandrines of Corneille. The 
prettiest thing ever said of the Cid was what he 
said of himself on his death-bed at the daybreak 
of the twelfth century, in 1099 : *No paid mourn- 
ers shall follow me ; the tears of my wife will 
suffice ! ' Such a terse, true sentence as this 
gives far deeper insight into the man's character 
than all the ' romanceros ' ever written. 

They show an old trunk, too, which once con- 
tained the sand which the Cid deposited with a 



422 SPAIN IN PROFILh: 

Jew as surety for the red gold he had borrowed 
when he was once in distress — the ^ dean of all 
the trunks in the world,' says Gautier, — the an- 
cestor of all the lordly descendants that annually 
visit the spas of the continent for their health. 
Burgos clings to the old box as if it were a bit of 
the true cross, and not all the temptations of St. 
Anthony could sever the tie which binds the old 
burg and the old box tenderly together. 

The other churches of Burgos, — Santa Agueda, 
San Esteban, and San Gil, — though immensely 
old, have little of interest save the hallowing 
touch of legend on their silvery heads. As you 
walk up the busy alameda you come on a gate, 
the Arco de Santa Maria, one of the most ef- 
fective architectural masses to be seen. It is 
just such a grand gate as one imagines open- 
ing and letting out the lords and ladies of Ivan- 
hoe, or Count Robert of Paris ; it is turreted 
and battlemented till it is delightful to see, and 
stands over the spot whence Don Pedro hurled 
the poet Garcilaso de la Vega from a tower now 
no longer in existence. It is a perfect picture, 
and one of those charming things that makes 
you long to be an artist, that you may transfer its 
antique pomp of bastion and pride of battle- 
mented wall straightway to your sketch-book. 
About the old Castle there is a tender perfume 
that blows to us from English history, for here 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 423 

Edward I. married that Eleanor of Castile whose 
death caused so many crosses to be erected wher- 
ever her body rested, on its long journey to Lon- 
don, giving rise to the poetic but unphilological 
etymology, Charing Cross (Chere Reine Cross, 
— rather from Charan, to turn, because the street 
made a bend there).-^ The Cid was born and 
married within its walls ; but nearly all its memo-, 
ries and beauties were blown up in the air when 
Wellington and Soult contended for it early in 
this century, and a great explosion took place, 
shivering to a thousand atoms the beautiful and 
irrecoverable painted windows of the cathedral. 
And what more than a piece of painted glass was 
the old Duke himself ? Fragments of fourteenth, 
fifteenth, and sixteenth century domestic life may 
be seen intact in certain venerable houses of 
those dates still standing, with now a noble court- 
yard and series of pillars, now an old palace, and 
now a group of armorial bearings belonging to 
some of the haughtiest blood in Spain. A charm- 
ing feature about Burgos is its dilapidated mar- 
ket-places, colonnaded all around, and fraught 
with a vivacity that never seems to die out ; the 
long avenues of twinkling poplars ; the deep 
streets, with their uneven pavement; the inten- 
sity of the Spanish type there indigenous ; the 
old pumps, portals, and shops ; the hundreds of 
1 Hare, Walks in London. 



424 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

gilded and trellised miradores running up three 
or four stories, and presenting the aspect of 
show-windows, continued on the outside all the 
way to the top of the house. 

Imagine all this weird yet winsome detail gath- 
ered about the feet of a mighty church ; imagine 
the church itself resting like a mother among 
her children, and casting over the place a spell 
of grace and peace ; trace the morning and the 
evening shadows over all this life ; stop to listen 
a moment to the proverbs dropping from these 
Spanish lips ; think of the narrowest, intensest, 
most poetic, most unintellectual existence ever 
dreamt of by a village Plato : — then look in your 
oldest Spanish dictionary, and you will find, in 
answer to the quest : Burgos. 

The Burgos guides point the pilgrim to the en- 
virons of the old city as worth seeing : so the 
reader will follow me or not, as he thinks fit, 
while I briefly describe them, 

' The convent of Las Huelgas,' says a recent 
writer, 'is situated on the high-road to Vallado- 
lid, and was founded by Alfonso VIII. and his 
queen, Leonora, daughter of Henry II., of Eng- 
land, in 1180, on the site of some pleasure- 
grounds (huelgas^ from Holgar^ to rest = sans 
souci). It has been often augmented and re- 
paired in subsequent periods, and is therefore 
not homogeneous in either style or shape. Of 



SPAIN I.V PROFILE. 425 

the former palace, or villa, nothing more, it is 
said, remains than the small cloister with fantas- 
tical capitals, and Byzantine semicircular arch. 
The church was consecrated in 1279, and was 
the work of King St. P'erdinand. It is of a good 
pure Gothic, severe, and well characterized. The 
interior of the church is not very interesting, the 
altars churrigueresque and gaudy, with a Christ 
dressed with a most profane crinoline, an offer- 
ing of the present lady abbess. The abbesses of 
Huelgas used formerly to be most powerful, and 
inferior to no one in dignity besides the queen ; 
they were mitred ' Sehoras de horca y cuchillo ' 
{i. e, with right of life and death), lorded over 
fifty-one villages and boroughs, named their al- 
caldes, curates, chaplains, and possessed the style 
of '' Por la gracia de Dios^ and ' nullius diocesis,^ 
It is one of the few remaining convents which 
have preserved, though considerably diminished, 
extensive landed property, amounting to some fif- 
teen \kiOXi'$>2iXidi fanegas^ several villages, and many 
thousand head of merino sheep. The order is 
Cistercian ; and to gain admission the nuns must, 
besides the ordinary exigencies of the rule, bring 
a dowry, and belong to the nobility. The con- 
finement is most strict, and the nuns can only be 
visited by ladies. On Sundays, during high mass, 
they may be nevertheless seen sitting in their 
magnificently carved stalls, singing and praying. 



426 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

and clad in a most becoming dress. As the 
building was also intended for the burial-house of 
the kings of Castile, there are several tombs 
worthy of a rapid glance. In this church the 
marriage took place of the Infante de la Cerda 
with Blanche, daughter of St. Louis of France, at 
which the kings of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, the 
Moorish king of Granada, Prince Edward of 
England (son of Henry III.), the Empress of 
Constantinople, the French Dauphin, and twenty 
or thirty other crowned heads and princes were 
present. Amongst the nuns of rank that have 
lived and died here, were Berenguela, daughter 
of St. Ferdinand j Maria of Aragon, aunt of 
Charles V., etc. In the chapel of Santiago is 
preserved an image of this warrior saint, in which 
some springs move the arms. Here aspirants to 
knighthood used to ' velar las armas ' (keep the 
vigil), and when they were knighted, a sword was 
fastened to the right hand of the image which, 
by moving a spring, fell gently on the recipient's 
shoulder, and thus their dignity was saved ; for 
otherwise, it was an offence to receive the acco- 
lade (dub of knighthood) from a man.' 

The Carthusian Convent and church of La 
Cartuja, near which the railroad passes, must 
also be seen for the fine tombs, the elegance of 
the architecture, the altar gilt with the gold 
brought by Columbus in his second voyage from 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 427 

America, and the splendid retablo behind the al- 
tar. The place breathes of Isabella and her 
dead brother, to whom she raised one of these 
striking commemorative tombs : tombs which are 
a sort of animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdom 
in the small, whereon the tropic wealth of erudite 
imaginations has exhausted itself, and the stricken 
stone almost cries out, like Pygmalion's statue. 
There is a sunny and strange pathos about the 
place : Silence, the Carthusian god, reigns su- 
preme, in company with its brother Desolation ; 
there is no telling how many of the old breth- 
ren a turn of the spade might bring to light in 
the burial-ground ; a sorrowing sisterhood of cy- 
presses throws its heart-shaped shade athwart the 
motionless air; the air has a lament in it as it 
wanders among the flying buttresses and florid 
Gothic of the aged church, and all around invis- 
ible fingers have written : Thou shalt die. 

Just where France and Spain meet, in one cor- 
ner of the Cantabrian Sea, is San Sebastian. It 
is a compact little town, new as the newest, built 
on a peninsula, with high mountains all around, 
a wide passage opening to the sea, a great roll 
and undulation of sunny hills to the southward, 
a train at its back door, and forty omnibuses, 
manned by sturdy Basques, in waiting for your 
worship when you arrive. It is a little place that 



428 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

has sprung up almost Thebes-like to the Am- 
phion-lyre of good fish, good bathing, striking 
scenery, and most gracious accessibility to the 
rest of Europe. It is now one of the two places 
that rank as * cities ' in the Basque Provinces. 
To drop in at such a place, after a long railway 
roll among the moth-eaten cities of Spain ; to 
enjoy its quaint, fresh life ; to see the Spanish 
grandees and notabilities that have escaped from 
the dust of Madrid, and have come to inhale its 
salt air ; to hear the soft and melodious Basque 
spoken by men in blue boinas, and women in 
hoods of Aragon and Navarre ; to feast on the 
beautiful apple-orchards literally crimson and 
gold with autumn apples ; and to go to bed in 
clean sheets, in a new hotel that has a perfectly 
new and unsophisticated proprietor, — all the 
trials of summer pilgrims in Spain are forgotten 
in such a place. It then becomes grateful, from 
such a coigne of vantage, to look back over the 
journey accomplished, the conscience quieted, 
and the store of recollections garnered. It must 
be like the bees when the winter comes : from 
how many bitter flowers the honey flows ! One 
has crossed the very valley of the shadow, and 
has half become one of the eternal lotus-eaters : 
the mind, like the grave accent, turns backward, 
and catches only the light of the lovelier days ; 
there is a joy of things accomplished and things 



SPAIN IN PROFIIE. 429 

remembered ; and over the wide hills and the 
yellow valleys there rests a transfiguration. It is 
not difficult, then, to forgive Spain all she has 
done to us, — to pass over the slow trains, the 
sluggish life, the empty compliments, the narrow 
prejudices, the ignorance, saint-worship, and in- 
decency, the pitiful dislike to foreigners, the lack 
of newspapers, inns, and clean linen, the vice, 
squalor, and impenitence. One can even over- 
look the priests that dot the land like asterisks 
and obeluses, — designed to refer the spectator 
to other ages. There is so much that is bright 
and eloquent in Spain, but fortitude must be ex- 
ercised in seeing it. 

' Han dejado 
Sepulcros para memorias ! ^ 

Exclaims Lope of the ages of Spanish influence 
and affluence. The period when, according to an 
old romancero, Spaniards were ^ like steel among 
men, like wax among women,' has passed away. 
Fra Luis de Leon's ^ rich wound of the eternal 
side ' flows no longer for them. Rolling in through 
these fair and bounteous gates of southwestern 
France, or over the wonderful verdure of the 
Barcelona coast, the traveler would have little 
idea of what was in store for liim. There is a 
sudden plenteousness of vegetation which makes 
him marvel, and brings him to think of those 
olden days of luxuriance and wealth when gold 



430 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

and spices flowed in from all the Indies, and 
Philip could lavish millions on his ugly ash-heap. 
But the slow coiling and twining of the train 
through the Pyrenees, the slow march of the dili- 
gence from Perpignan, soon bring him down into 
immeasurable flats, jaundiced vegetation, rivers 
like gum Arabic, and the huge pallor of a color- 
less and extinguished landscape. Due penance 
is done for the weariness caused by the greenery 
of France ; weeks and weeks may pass without 
a single flash of green along a river, a single 
glint of gold in fruity orchards. 

San Sebastian, Biarritz, Santander, Hendaya, 
Irun, San Juan de Luz, are exceptions to the 
general wanness of the country. As soon as one 
reaches the country of pale blue granites, Basque 
villages, hay-fields and wheat-fields; as soon as 
the poppies and the corn-flowers begin to brighten 
the grain ; as soon as the subtle chill of the sea 
thrusts its lance through the heavy air and pricks 
the Seven Sleepers of Spain into wakefulness and 
vigilance ; so soon does an astonishing change 
come over the face of the earth : there are rush- 
ing mill-wheels, smoking factories, active indus- 
tries, population, life, intelligence. The Basques 
deserve better than to be known only from hav- 
ing given the under-petticoat to the Spanish 
women. They have always been renowned for 
sprightliness, poetic temperament, rugged inde- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE. 43 I 

pendence, and purity ; their strange legends and 
dances, the wild poetry of their wandering singers 
and improvisatores, their simple faith, constancy, 
and fortitude, the oddities of the fneros^ or local 
customs that control the confederation of Basque 
hamlets and fishing towns, the peculiarities of 
their un-European and as yet unclassified lan- 
guage, have for generations attracted attention 
and invited research. Wentworth Webster, 
Prince Bonaparte, Sayce, and several French and 
Spanish scholars, have lately thrown light on this 
curious people and their Euskara dialect, as they 
call it. The country-folk are seen trooping into 
San Sebastian, or gathered in Teniers-like groups 
in the market-places : wise, kind, sober people 
of economic instincts, social habits, and ancient 
prejudices. They pride themselves greatly on 
having given birth to Ignatius Loyola, whose 
sumptuous college, convent, and church, called 
the * wonder of Guipuzcoa,' are shown in the 
neighborhood of Azcoitia. One of the holy 
man's fingers adorns the reliquary of this estab- 
lishment : there are silver altars, marbles, ter- 
races, staircases ; a mighty dome caps the church ; 
opulent estates and revenues yield goodly pro- 
vision to the establishment ; and the whole foun- 
dation lies in a beautiful plain where there are 
sulphur springs, — into which it should be dipped 
twice a day for purification. Guipuzcoa, as the 



432 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

natives call the province, abounds in little mount- 
ain baths, vegas, valleys, streams that shoot down 
the glady slopes and mingle their waters with 
the Bay of Biscay. The Basques could not 
escape the ^ pesky ' Wellington ; so the light of 
1 8 13 is still traceable here and there over their 
battle-scarred Province. A feeble chapter of 
' celebrated men ' usually accompanies the San 
Sebastian guide-books ; but it is hardly worth 
while to discover to the world such names as 
Elcano, Churruca, Oquendo, Legazpi, Urdaneta, 
Zumalacarregui, and Idiaquez, many of which 
have a strange resemblance to Aztec names. 
Nor, perhaps, would the other twenty thousand 
inhabitants of San Sebastian thank us for select- 
ing half a dozen of the illustrious and leaving 
the unillustrious throng uncommemorated. San 
Sebastian is too bright and charming a place to 
enter into guide-book details of its name, antiq- 
uity, fortresses, coat-of-arms, notable deeds, cli- 
mate, population, and sea-baths. Its * actuality,' 
as the Spanish say, or present condition, com- 
pares favorably with that of the most celebrated 
resorts. The length and breadth of churches, 
the height or lowness of barometers, has little to 
do with its present prosperity. Its ancient walls 
and fortifications have unfortunately disappeared 
in the general march of improvement ; the ' new 
horizons ' so much coveted in France and Gar- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 433 

many — acquired by leveling to the earth the 
most precious relics of the buttressed and battle- 
mented Past — have been acquired here ; ^ the 
heat of new ideas, peace and fraternity/ has dis- 
solved the crystallizations of ancient fancy and 
convenience ; and San Sebastian now looks to 
the sea over wide streets, elmed and lindened 
boulevards, and nail-new mansard roofs quite to 
its satisfaction. Oh, that Monsieur Mansard had 
perished before he gave his name to this fatal 
roof ! San Sebastian is an example of what the 
Spaniards call ^ a near and smiling future,' — 
though what causes the smile of the future is 
rather hard to see. The local guide-book lately 
published heaps a litany of curses on war, hate, 
desire of vengeance, and thirst of blood ; all 
which, according to this authority, convert hu- 
manity (with a delightful complexity of metaphor) 
into thirsty hyenas, ruin, and tears ! And the 
litany of curses is followed by a litany of bene- 
dictions on the peace that maketh men brethren, 
on the tranquillity that develops moral and ma- 
terial interests, on the nations as they travel 
down the illimitable path of progress (whatever 
that is), and on the mission of civilization that 
fulfilleth and perfecteth the designs of Provi- 
dence ! After the good people have thus cleared 
their throats and consciences, they betake them- 
selves to devout meditation, to church, and to the 
28 



434 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

Middle Ages ; they go to sleep for a century, 
while all the brilliant fumes of their painted 
imaginations go up a chimney built three hun- 
dred years ago ! Such is a picture of aspirations 
and realities in Spain. 

Volvamos empero a nuestro tenia. 

Why the San Sebastianos should chuckle over 
their razed fortifications it is difficult to see ; but 
they say that the present state of things as com- 
pared with the past presents a most pleasing and 
consolatory spectacle. One agrees to the beauty, 
but Rachel refuses to be comforted. A flowery 
alameda planted with trees has replaced the old 
wall ; a market-place has sprung from the very 
mouths of the cannon ; the furious sea has been 
kept from the long menaced city ; broad and spa- 
cious streets, excellently paved and lighted, replace 
bristling fort and fosse ; and shops streaming 
with the glories of Paris open their lighted apart- 
ments to the promenader. The ancient military 
importance of the place is gone, but que importa ? 
The city breathes free from its walls ; and while 
its former maritime importance is gone too, it has 
risen to be a decided moral force in the Spanish 
empire. More than twenty thousand foreigners 
visited the place as long ago as the summer of 
1870. The fine sea-shore of this part of the 
country, — Spain has over eight hundred miles of 
Atlantic and seventeen hundred miles of Medi- 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 435 

terranean sea-coast, — the numerous water-cures 
and mineral springs, the medicinal repute of the 
sulphur and saline baths, conspire to develop 
the place prodigiously and fill it with a summer 
sparkle of fashionable life. Spanish people tell 
you of magnificent edifices, varied spectacles, 
new centres of recreation, large spring colonies, 
annual augmentation of passionate pilgrims, — 
in short, sing the usual Spanish ballad over what 
is by no means the usual Spanish watering-place. 
In fourteen or fifteen years an entirely new pop- 
ulation has taken possession of the old town ; 
and the new wine is almost too much for the old 
bottles. Without going into the alphabetical list 
of its streets, the mysteries of its civil administra- 
tion, or the careers of its local celebrities, there 
is much of interest to see ; there are fine walks 
and drives, as picturesque as anything in Savoy 
or the French Pyrenees ; there are environs which 
may be described as delicious ; precious paseos^ 
hills rich in panoramas and vistas, military music 
on many a fine evening, superb moonlight a-shine 
through the livelong August nights, fives-courts, 
country houses, and clubs. The abundance of 
comforts makes one rub one's eyes : is it Spain ? 
High sounding literary and musical societies are 
not wanting ; a casino ; a bull-ring; a mercantile 
and industrial * cercle,' after the fashion of France ; 
a circus-theatre and various play-houses ; mova- 



436 SPAIN IN PROFILE. 

ble bath-houses without number along the sea- 
shore ; and lastly, the Pearl of the Ocean., an ele- 
gant bathing establishment luxuriously furnished 
in every direction and with everything. Minute 
directions are given as to the period, character- 
istics, duration, and hygiene of the baths; and 
if you are curious, formidable papers bristling 
with statistics, physical and chemical properties 
of sea-water, chemical analyses, tables of car- 
bonic acid, the latest specific gravity according 
to the last results of Gay-Lussac, — not to speak 
of electro-magnetic properties and phosphores- 
cence, — are at your service. The savor and the 
odor, the degree of saline saturation and the rate 
of evaporation, how to dress and what to do, if 
you happen to be a rheumatic old gentleman or a 
nervous old lady, whether you are delicate or de- 
bilitated, — all is made straight for you by these 
statistical John the Baptists, and you have noth- 
ing to do but to pay. A chapter on hydrography 
tells you all about what the San Sebastianos did 
to get wells of sweet water, and how it is distrib- 
uted, followed by columns of figures going sol- 
emnly into the linear measure of water-pipes, 
and the liquid measure of azumbres of water in 
twenty-four hours. An isle with a light-house on 
it lies at the entrance of the shell-shaped bay — 
called La Concha — of San Sebastian ; where- 
upon the Spanish chronicler takes occasion to go 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 437 

into the genealogy and etymology of light-houses ; 
pointing to the Pharos of Alexandria, which was 
one of the wonders of the world, the light-house 
of the promontory of Sigaeum, in the Troad, and 
the ancient light-house of Boulogne, by which the 
Romans lighted themselves to Britain. A fine 
castle defends the port, and is surrounded by a 
whole dragon-brood of ramparts, mines, cham- 
bers, and military prisons. The railroad hours 
are most convenient ; travel is cheap ; stage 
coaches are abundant ; and everybody has plenty 
of time. A really surprising number of newspa- 
pers and periodicals see the light in San Sebas- 
tian j whether the light of day or the light of fire, 
an inspection of their contents will speedily de- 
termine. With true Spanish gallantry, there is 
one called 'The Friend of the Ladies,' devoted 
— not to men — but to modes. Banks, insurance 
companies, philanthropic associations, asylums, 
schools, civil edifices, churches, might all be vol- 
uminously described, if they had the least inter- 
est to the untraveled. Every other house is a ho- 
tel, or a boarding-house, or a casa de huespedes. 
Every other a has the English breadth or the 
French lightness. Every other cravat you see 
came from the Bon Marche. Women-haters and 
man-hunters pass you at every few steps ; eremites 
of Chartreuse and habitues of Mabille saunter in 
the wide-thrown light of the gas lamps, and listen 



438 SPAIN IN PROFILE, 

to the music issuing from a gorgeous pavilion in 
the alameda. The beginning and the end of the 
social alphabet seem to be on terms of friendly- 
equality. The French talk Spanish and the Span- 
ish talk French, in amiable condescension. No 
matter what country you come from, some oblig- 
ing waiter will inform you that he has been there. 
Everywhere you meet acquaintances, — people 
that you have dived with down into the bowels of 
the Escorial, or toiled with up the heights of the 
Alhambra ; old ladies with Murray clasped to 
their hearts, and Baedeker written all over their 
faces ; army officers, who startle you by peremp- 
torily demanding to see the corpses of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, five hundred miles from where they 
are buried \ foreign consuls, who have married 
Andalusian chamber-maids, and cultivate art ; 
English cockneys, talking out of their throats, 
and dispensing sovereigns ; old maiden artists, 
who travel third-class, go all over Algeria and 
Morocco alone, sketch Mohammedan mosques, 
and get remittances from home (oblivious of h'^) 
in ten-pound notes j all of these scenes and faces 
dart out of one's memorabilia pocket-book, and 
claim a notice with acute accents. San Sebastian 
is the place to see them ! Spence's Anecdotes — 
nay, Walpole's Letters — might be written afresh 
in these Cantabrian latitudes ; the * laced petti- 
coats of my lady Castlemaine,' that *did' old 



SPAIN IN PROFILE, 439 

Pepys * so much good/ might do another Pepys 
good under the shadow of the Pyrenees ; and 
one is sure that old Fuller, under the elms of San 
Sebastian, could indefinitely increase the ^ Worth- 
ies ' whom he so blithesomely describes. 
' O cuan dulce y suavisima memoria ! ' 

cries a Spanish poet in words applicable as well 
to the memory of San Sebastian. The other day 
the cannon's mouth flamed with the red roses and 
wreathing smoke-flowers of war, and all the hills 
around it roared under the Spanish guns ; but 
all this has failed to wreck the glory, or stay the 
summer that lingers over the place. Nature has 
here shown a chance combination of rare grace. 
Castelar and the poets love the place ; it has a 
pleasantness all its own ; San Sebastian and its 
suburbs might be wrought up into a brilliant 
chapter. I know people who delight in it, and 
who would go back to it as gladly as the storks 
go to Egypt, or the swallows follow the South. 

So may God let thee, Reader, gather fruit 
From this thy reading. 

Dante. 



31^77 "6 



;U! U- 



.«'!'' ^^^O^GREsT 




